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Is it Hot in Here or is it Me?

The best grist for comedy usually comes from life’s miseries, and this is a perfect example of people having fun at Nature’s expense.  OK, maybe not totally Nature.  This show laughs at and with book author Gayle Sand, a forty seven year old woman who crashes head on into menopause, wreaking havoc along the way. 

Playwright Lina Gallegos and Midlife Productions adapt author’s Sand’s account of what has to be one of the most traumatic experiences in a woman’s life and find all kinds of reasons to make fun.  Dee Wallace Stone (the Mom in ET) takes Gayle, the main character, through the difficulties of dealing with the hot flashes, the anxieties of dealing with people and the change in her married life, her husband and her sex life.

Her odyssey is joined by beautiful Donna Cherry playing her alter ego, “Rational Gayle”, a younger non-menopausal version of Gayle, who follows her through the ordeal, offers advice, gives warnings, but in typical alter ego tradition, backs off when the going gets tough, leaving Gayle to fend for herself.  Ruben Garfias plays Ben, the comically patient husband, trying to be supportive, who blows it occasionally when things get too hot to handle.

All the little vignettes are classics, with a terrific cast of zanies who, like chameleons, morph from one goofy character to another as Gayle bumps along into everyone, trying desperately to cope.

There are fringe doctors who offer all types of non-traditional remedies; women in beauty shops offering opinions and even the Three Stooges poke their fingers in the act.  A favorite is Mel Gorham whose rubbery faces create wonderful lampoons of a Puerto Rican woman, a vibrator addict and an Quasimodo like doctor with a wonderfully sinister laugh.  Richard Gleason is terrific as a drunk who knows all about women, having had three wives, and Sybyl Walker knocks everyone’s socks off with her voodoo type cure-all ritual.  She also does a mean gospel act.  Jim Gleason has multiple roles, which get funnier each time, and Casey Jones tries to ease Gayle’s frustrations with acupuncture and later returns as a yoga master.

X-ray techs will probably take out a contract on Jeff Sumner when they see how he portrays them, and Margarita Lamas adds to Gayle’s frustration as her mother who can’t sympathize with her.  Overall, the audience laughs at just about every scene, and even when they try to be serious, there are comic undertones.  Director Johanna Siegemann keeps the troops in check with fast paced action and clever dialog. Using only folding chairs as props, the production relies on imaginative lighting by Danny McCabe and is reinforced by well chosen music, paced timely by Ray Colcord.

The production continues through November 23, 2003 at the Egyptian Arena Theatre at 1625 Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood.