Lawson Taitte

What do you want from a musical revue? Great singing? Big laughs? Mid-Life! The Crisis Musical has it all – if you're over 40 or so.

Theatre Three is hoping that the new show in its basement space, reviewed Saturday, will find some of the same success that its long-running hit I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change! brought the company. This piece by writer-actor brothers Bob and Jim Walton doesn't deal with contemporary courtship and marriage, though.

Instead, it obsesses about baldness, menopause and prescription-drug side effects. B.J. Cleveland has the audience in stitches as he reads the instructions on a medication that a new doctor has given him. Doug Jackson is almost as funny when singing about his vanishing hair.

A revue is not built on yuks alone, however. Sally Soldo and Jenny Thurman have two of the best voices in town: Ms. Soldo caresses the closest thing the show has to a ballad, "When He Laughs," with a velvet larynx, and Ms. Thurman belts the up-tempo songs with a brassy buzz.

Terry Dobson, who doubles as stage and music director (and accompanies from the onstage keyboards), has a knack for bringing out the best in performers. Randy Pearlman looks particularly relaxed and comfortable here, and Amy Mills is delightfully irrepressible.

Here's a litmus test for whether you'll enjoy Mid-Life! If you ruefully find yourself comparing medical histories when you get together with old friends, you'll love it. If you're the one at the table rolling your eyes over such a conversation, wait for another show to come along.