A touring musical built around hot flashes, memory lapses and a disputed black lace bra is making its only Chicago-area stop at Aurora's Paramount Theatre. “Menopause the Musical” arrives downtown for a single matinee on Saturday, October 17 at 3 p.m., bringing its 25th anniversary national tour to the historic 1931 venue at 23 E. Galena Blvd.
The show follows four women — archetypes known as the Earth Mother, the Soap Star, the Iowa Housewife and the Professional Woman — who meet by chance at a department store lingerie sale and end up bonding over shared symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats and memory loss, all while squabbling over ownership of a black lace bra, according to South Florida Theater. As reported by Shaw Local, the Paramount date marks the only Chicago-area stop on this leg of the tour, with tickets priced between $40 and $70.
The comedy leans heavily on its soundtrack of 25 parodies built from classic pop and rock hits of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Per Ticketmaster, songs like “Chain of Fools” become “Change of Life,” “Staying Alive” turns into “Staying Awake,” and “Night Fever” is reworked into “Night Sweating,” with the parodied lyrics covering everything from food cravings to mood swings.
A Grassroots Show That Became a Global Franchise
“Menopause the Musical” began far more modestly than its current touring footprint suggests. The show premiered on March 28, 2001, at the Church Street Theatre in Orlando, performing in a 76-seat space that playwright Jeanie Linders had converted from a former perfume shop, according to BroadwayWorld.
From that storefront start, the production ran Off-Broadway from 2002 to 2006 for more than 1,500 performances and has since reached an estimated global audience exceeding 17 million people across 500 cities in 16 countries, per the same outlet. In Las Vegas, the show set a record as the longest-running scripted musical in that city's history, staging 7,458 performances over a 21-year Strip run before announcing its closing in August 2026, as reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That residency's run underscores how far public conversation around women's health and comedy has traveled since the show's 2001 debut, per the Review-Journal's coverage of the closing announcement.
The 25th anniversary tour is produced by GFour Productions, with Tony Award winner Seth Greenleaf directing and producing the anniversary production, BroadwayWorld reports.
Inside the Paramount's Art Deco Walls
The Paramount Theatre itself carries its own history. The downtown Aurora venue opened in September 1931 as a 1,885-seat movie palace designed by architects Rapp and Rapp in the Art Deco style with Venetian-inspired interior touches, according to Chicagoland Muse & Views. The building was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and anchors downtown Aurora's Stolp Island Historic District, per Wikipedia.
Since launching its self-produced Broadway Series in 2011, the Paramount has grown its subscriber base to more than 36,000, making it the second-largest subscription theater program in the country, according to EnjoyAurora.com. That scale carries real weight for downtown Aurora's economy: venues operated by the Aurora Civic Center Authority, led by the Paramount, drew more than 630,000 patrons across 700 events in 2024, generating an estimated $23 million in direct non-ticket spending for local businesses, per the Aurora Civic Center Authority. The same data shows 83% of event patrons travel from outside Aurora to attend.
Tickets and Showtime Details
Audiences will cheer and dance in the aisles, according to a news release cited by Shaw Local. The Paramount box office is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., or until showtime on performance days. Ticket information is available at paramountaurora.com or by calling 630-896-6666.
