It’s girls night out for ‘Cougar the Musical’

“Cougar the Musical” began as a single joke by Donna Moore in her one-woman cabaret act.

“Why are we giving a woman a derogatory name for dating a younger man when the name for a man who dates younger women is – I’ve researched this – a man?” Moore bemoaned, getting a knowing laugh from women of a certain age in the audience.

Moore took the hint and expanded her act to a full-fledged musical about three “fabulously over-40” women seeking new adventures with 20-something boy-toys after surviving divorce, widowhood, menopause and middle-aged boredom. The show hit off-Broadway in 2012 and caused a stir with sassy songs like “On the Prowl,” “Say Yes” and “Julio,” a seductive ballad sung to a, well, sex toy.

Now, Roxy’s Downtown is giving the show its Midwestern premiere, and director Cindy Summers sees it as a perfect girls night out treat – although she is quick to note that husbands and boyfriends need not be scared off. Where the guys will giggle, she says, the gals will guffaw.

“It’s a fun show that does cater to the ladies. What I really like is that it’s about bonding and laughing and relationships,” Summers said.

“It’s about women facing what to do with themselves at a certain point in their lives after a life-changing event, such as a divorce or death or empty nest syndrome when the kids have gone away to college. It’s about the whole idea of dating again. Of getting back out into the world. Of stepping out of the box. Of discovering yourself and what you’re made of. It’s fun but with a message.”

The three women at the heart of the romp are Patty Reeder as Mary-Marie, an outgoing Southern widow who opens a singles bar for older ladies, which she calls her “den of antiquity”; Kelly Wonsetler as Lily, a winsome and somewhat timid divorcee who makes her living as a children’s party entertainer; and Ronda Kingwood as Clarity, a brainy, tailored professor of women’s studies who always put her career before relationships.

Ryan Ehresman plays multiple roles as the various younger men in their lives, from Buck, the sympathetic mixologist at the cougar bar where they meet, to outrageous characters called Twilight Dude, Bourbon Cowboy, Naked Peter and Goliath. He also steps into drag as Eve, the manicurist/ confessor/ therapist for the three ladies.

Reeder, whose own husband is 16 years her junior, said she had no trouble jumping right into character.

“Absolutely, I can identify with her,” says Reeder, founder of and frequent performer at Mosley Street Melodrama in Old Town. “It’s not about being the same age, it’s about hooking up with someone at the same level of life. I know what she’s like. She comes to me pretty easily.”

Of Mary-Marie, Reeder says: “She’s brassy. I like her spunk. She tells it like it is. She was always the good Southern wife, but now that she’s a widow, she comes out of her shell to find her best self. She opens a singles bar for older ladies and younger men. I think she’s a Southern-fried genius.”

Wonsetler also identifies with her character of Lily, the children’s party entertainer, because of her own long career as performer and director at Wichita Children’s Theatre & Dance Center.

“I also relate to her very well because of her divorce, which I went through last year. She is learning to spread her wings and find her own strengths. She has the biggest breakout of the three,” Wonsetler says. “At the beginning, she is a little appalled by the idea of the cougar bar. But after her divorce papers, she gets up the nerve to join a singles group to learn to rely on herself. She isn’t bigger than life, she’s very relatable.”

Kingwood says she doesn’t personally relate to the idea of a “cougar” because younger men are “not my thing.”

“But I can recognize myself in some aspects of Clarity’s menopausal life,” says Kingwood, who was a frequent performer in the 1990s at Cabaret Oldtown (Roxy’s forerunner).

“Clarity is outspoken. She expresses herself. She is open-minded but she is also opinionated. I have that confidence. I identify with being a direct person. She can be a bit superior, but I don’t think of that as a flaw,” Kingwood said.

Ehresman, the only guy in the cast, says of his various characters that “They’re all crazy – superficial, dumb, obsessed with looks, bimbos. They don’t have complex back stories. They are the butt of the jokes.”

Except, that is, for his main incarnation, Buck the bartender.

“Buck is real. He’s a character rather than a caricature,” Ehresman said.

“Buck is a struggling New York City actor who works as a bartender while auditioning for parts,” Ehresman said. “Like the women, he is trying to discover what he really wants to do in life.”

This story was originally published June 17, 2015 at 8:56 PM with the headline "It’s girls night out for ‘Cougar the Musical’."