MID-LIFE! the Crisis Musical
is a musical by the duo of Jim Walton and Bob Walton chronicling, well, the joys and perils of midlife. A series of unconnected vignettes featuring three men and three women cover aspects of midlife from doctor's visits to cosmetic drugs to infidelity to seeing your parents grow old.
A sequel was produced, MID-LIFE 2! The Crisis Continues
This work exhibits the following tropes:
- Basement-Dweller: "Empty Nest" is about the parents' dismay that their child still hasn't moved on. At the end of the song, he tells them that he's decided to move in with his girlfriend. They rejoice until they realize he means moving her home...
- Bestiality Is Depraved: From "He Got What He Deserved":"He got what he deserves / The only ones who mess with sheep are either farmers or pervs."
- Camp Gay: The husband coming out in "I Quit.""I'm gay. Hooray! Throw my power tools away / I'm not exactly walking out. It's more of a sashay."
- Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis: Played up in some of the songs such as "I Quit" and "He Got What He Deserved", which are essentially about people deciding that they want more out of their life and going for it.
- Hollywood Tourette's: While the song that explicitly mentions Tourette's, "Turning Forty", is about a character realizing that they're starting to sound like their father, "Side Effects" implies that one of the side effects for the drug is a version of Tourette's with twitching and a tendency to rude outbursts.
- Mid-Life Crisis Car: In "He Got What He Deserved", one of the ladies laments that her husband "traded in our mini-van / for a shiny sports car, naturally it's red."
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking: The point of the "Biological Clock" song is simply this. It goes from suggestion to seduction to outright assault by the stage directions.
- Side Effects Include...: "Side Effects" indicates that the fictional drug of Lipodexterine, meant to cure high cholesterol, may induce high cholesterol, blinking and rude outbursts, stigmata in men with comb-overs, comb-overs, false optimism when consumed with beers, leg spasms if Riverdance videos are watched, and multiple nipples in lab monkeys. And sudden stoppage may cause death...
