Change of power

Rhodessa Jones flashes hot at 7 Stages

Rhodessa Jones dubs her current one-woman show Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers, and you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes — or Betty Friedan — to deduce that the title refers to menopause. An actress, teacher, dancer and co-artistic director of San Francisco’s Cultural Odyssey, Jones makes a brazenly confident case that life begins after The Change.
Hot Flashes will be most appreciated by other women of a certain age. Like a congregation moved by an enthusiastic preacher, many in the audience responded to Jones’ remarks with “That’s right!” and “Mm-hm!” especially in the first 15 minutes. With a shiny red dress and attitude to spare, Jones is pure diva, and though there’s not much to her show beyond the force of her personality, she’s not an easy character to forget.
Welcoming the audience to her “continuous 50th birthday party,” Jones makes an early declaration of her post-menopausal independence. “Vagina, vagina, vagina!” she calls, drawing out the last one like the “Bonanza” theme, and prompting the audience to sing along with her. Hot Flashes is not an Annie Sprinkle-esque show-and-tell lesson, but Jones speaks frankly of the pleasures of the flesh, even for an unattached woman: “Life can be grand if you’ve got a good hand!”
Nostalgia for her periods causes her to flash back to her very first one during a childhood basketball game, then later she tries to retrace her final one. She suspects that her period “escaped” while she was night-swimming on a Jamaican beach, which she recounts in a breezily surreal moment. A goodly portion of the evening is spent on her trip to the island — “Jamaica is one of my power spots,” she remarks — and she riffs a little on Terry McMillan’s How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Playing several Bob Marley songs, at one point she imitates herself dancing and cutting loose, a moment that comes across as less fun for us than for her.
Jones does some brief but entertaining impressions, such as her mother’s unenlightening explanations of the facts of life, or how Jamaican men (most of whom seem to be named “Desmond”) make passes: “The Lord is me shepherd and I see what I want!” But Hot Flashes isn’t about other characters, like the one-woman shows by Whoopi Goldberg or Lily Tomlin.
Nor is it a carefully structured autobiographical piece that delves deeply into language and memory, like Dael Orlandersmith’s The Gimmick (staged at Actor’s Express last spring). Jones touches on some of her highlights as a woman, but she tends to skim over them, for a narrative that tends to be loosely structured and uneventful.
The show opens with a video birthday message from her brother (choreographer Bill T. Jones), who recites a Rilke poem about growing up. Another videotaped segment, seemingly taken from a children’s television show, depicts Jones’ granddaughter talking about being raised by her widowed mother. With plenty of snapshots of older relatives as well, Jones can effectively celebrate the energy running through generations of women in her family. The flip side is that the show can also have an “Ask me about my grandchild” quality that’s less than compelling.
At about 75 minutes, Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers isn’t a terribly substantial show, although Jones reveals lessons she’s learned in getting to 50 (how to shop, not to buy or wear bad shoes, etc.), and revels in her own sexuality: “I’m all that and a meat patty.” Just before the end, she cheerfully passes around a basket of fruit and candy to the entire audience. Her message may not be meant for everyone, but she has such a vibrant persona that nobody’s likely to mind passing some time with her.
Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers plays through Nov. 26 at 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., with performances at 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat. and 5 p.m. Sun. $20. 404-523-7647.