STAGE: Ladies like to laugh

It seems there are more women’s reference comedies in our theatres these days than there are appliances in the modern kitchen.

No theatre schedule can be complete without a comedy vehicle that allows the fairer sex to mump its collective gums about weight problems and pole dancing ( The Naked Truth), giving birth (Mum’s The Word), the menopause (Menopause The Musical), or simply being female (The Vagina Monologues).

Now, before you can say “Pass the HRT patches, please” here’s another one. Hormonal Housewives doesn’t, as the title would perhaps suggest, focus on those females who are going through the change of life – if that were the case someone a little older than 44-year-old Carol Smillie would be cast in the lead role – but instead shines a light on the many, many problems modern women have to contend with.

“Every woman knows the challenges of juggling a career, childcare and the role of domestic goddess: women were multi-tasking before men stopped wearing loincloths!” says the King’s Theatre.

“This hilarious evening of excessive laughter follows three hormonal women as they battle against weight loss, weight gain, mood swings, PMS, pelvic floor exercises, stretch marks, the onslaught of HRT, make-overs, waxing, men, chocolate, upper-lip hair, chocolate, and all the other joys of reaching womanly maturity.”

Gosh. That’s an awful lot of problems. So many in fact, you wonder where they find the time to complain about them. Or indeed, write shows about them. But then again, women are the masters of multi-tasking.

Writer/performer Julie Coombe has found the time however, and she appears alongside Shonagh Price and the aforementioned Ms Smillie.

The show isn’t simply a selection of readings. It’s a collection of tales and sketches that large groups of ladies of all shapes and sizes will no doubt laugh out very loudly at.

Hormonal Housewives, King’s Theatre, March 1-6.

Take This instead

OK, this may not be the real thing, but if you can’t get the chance to see Take That, why not settle for a very close second?

Back For Good is a show that recreates the magic of Take That.

“With their amazing dance routines, numerous costume changes and phenomenal live performances, adoring fans will be singing and dancing within minutes – and left with little doubt that they are watching the greatest boy band of all time,” says the Pavilion Theatre. The show features all the feel-good favourites such as Relight My Fire, It Only Takes A Minute Girl, Everything Changes, Could It Be Magic and A Million Love Songs.

Back for Good, The Pavilion Theatre, Sunday.

Who killed the cat?

On a lonely road on the island of Inishmore, someone has cut short the life of Mad Padriac’s beloved cat. And when he gets back from a stint of torture and chip shop bombings in the north, someone is going to pay.

So who did kill Wee Thomas?

This “brutal, bloody and hilariously funny black comedy” from Olivier award-winning playwright Martin McDonagh returns to the Circle Studio.