Still sultry after all these years

You could consider it Desperate Housewives with more existential concerns (fading beauty, femininity, relationships, the nature of memory, and life with a capital "L," etc.), but with better acting and a better script – and great songs at that.

We’re Still Hot! The Musical – to be staged on March 17 and 18 at the new Teatrino, Greenhills Shopping Center – is an off-Broadway musical sex comedy, which "delves into the woman’s wonderful journey to another phase of her life." The musical claims to answer this essential question for the fairer gender: what is the secret of keeping one’s man despite a sagging body, hot flashes, and a constellation of young sluts running around in minuscule skirts, treating the whole planet like Temptation Island?

The musical is about four schoolmates meeting again for a homecoming production after over 30 years since leaving school and pursuing different roads. Their individual stories unfold in song and familiar repartee as they are drawn into comic melodrama. The ladies confront universal issues besetting femmes: fear of ageing, being alone and poor, longing for love, financial struggles and dreams unfulfilled, the constants. Or, in the words of one of the producers of the musical, "the desire to be desirable again, the urge not to be anonymous anymore." Or the dream of transcending "woe-manhood."

Veteran theater and TV actress Pinky Marquez says she considers her role as Cynthia Sawyer an eye-opener. "We women have all the same problems," she shares.

Of the four leads, Cynthia (who is married to a successful businessman) is the most aware of menopause and the physical effects of ageing. "Life has passed her by, taking with it not only her beauty, but even more important her ability to achieve her greatest desire – motherhood."

Lyn Sherman, a helluva lot better jazz singer than all the much-hyped young jazz chanteuses put together, plays Kate Phillips. Kate is a single mom of a 30-year-old song who just left home, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Lyn gets to sing one of the key lines in the production: "Life and I got in the way." Which reminds me of John Lennon’s immortal words in Beautiful Boy. "Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans."

Shamaine Centenera is Marnie Summers, a 53-year-old businesswoman. She has been married and divorced three times, and had countless lovers – like a 21-year-old personal trainer and a married businessman (Cynthia’s husband).

One of the producers, Niña Romualdez plays Zsu Zsu Herendy, who is the ultimate survivor. "For her own advantage, she will maneuver, plot, twist, scheme, bulldoze, seduce – skills she learned under the Hungarian Communist regime." In one scene, she admits to Kate, "What happens to a woman like me when I’m old, alone, frail, sick? Penniless at the mercy of strangers who don’t give a damn… give a damn?"

This is a musical that women (and we ardent fans of women) should give a damn about.

We’re Still Hot! The Musical – with play-dates at the new Teatrino, Greenhills Shopping Center on March 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 30 and 31, and April 1, 6, 7 and 8 – is produced by Bahaghari Productions’ Margie Floirendo and sponsored by Schering Phil. Corp.

For tickets (P1,000), call Cherry at 0917-4386807. Tickets are also available at Ticketworld at 891-9999, the Music Museum at 721-6726, and at Teatrino at 722-4532 local 116.