Fresno Famous

Kathy St. George saw the audition notice for “Menopause the Musical” and frankly, she wasn’t much interested.

“We all have dreams of a nice, long and varied career,” she says. And while she was a woman of a certain age, she wasn’t looking to be typecast.

Then, she saw the play.

“It’s unlike any show you’ve ever seen. It’s an event. It’s the kind of thing people come back to again and again,” says St. George, who plays the Soap Star in the musical parody, which stops at the Tower Theatre Jan. 12 and 13 as part of a three-month California tour.

There are no spoiler alerts to this one. The name lays it all out. The show is about menopause and four women — St. George’s Soap Star, plus the Professional Woman, the Earth Mother and the Iowa Housewife — who meet up at a department store lingerie sale. And because it’s a musical, they break into song, parodies for tunes for the ’60-80s. “Heatwave,” for example becomes “Hotflash,” St. George says. Then, she sings for me.

“I’m having a hot flash, a tropical hot flash.”

The show has a big draw with its core audience — those women of a certain age. It’s a big hit with the Red Hat Society, let’s say. For those women, the one’s who have been — or, are going — through menopause, there is a mutual understanding about this thing. Every woman has at least one “menopause moment.” St George had several. “ I felt like she was going crazy,” she says. There were times when she couldn’t stop crying. “And so, we laugh about it. Because what else can we do.” Which is what makes the show so appealing, she says. Both for the actors — St. George has been in several productions since 2004 — and the audience. Producers say the play has been seen by 1 million women in close to 800 cities in 15 countries. It is a universal theme, it seems.

One that transcends age and sex, St. George say. She’s seen three generations of women in the audience and more than a few men, too. They particularly come away with a new outlook on what their wives went through, she says. “It’s a celebration of an inevitable part of every woman’s life.”

If you want to see the show, you can enter our ticket contest.