Leila Navidi

Sue Ellen Cooper, left, the founder and Exalted Queen Mother of the Red Hat Society, greets cast members of Hats! Friday at the showroom of Harrah’s Las Vegas.

By Joe Brown

Sun, Jan 27, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Tiffany Brown

Red Hat Society members, from left, Anita Burchard, Edye Farran and Pat Hickok are gathered in the Cafe at Harrah’s to talk about the upcoming convention, the opening of the musical “Hats!” and a hoped-for record-setting chorus line.

Tiffany Brown

Red Hatter Lynda Pepitone of the Desert Bloomers of Henderson is one of more than 1 million Red Hatters around the world, all past age 50. When members attend society events they leave the men at home.

Arlene Gretz, queen of the Desert Bloomers of Henderson Red Hat Society chapter, sips a martini Monday while visiting at Harrah’s with members of four other Clark County chapters of the group for women 50 and older. Las Vegas has more than 150 chapters. Red Hatters wear purple hats instead of red in the month of their birthday.

The opening-night audience for “Hats! The Musical” — a colorfully costumed crowd of Red Hat Society members celebrating the 10th birthday of their group — was surprised when comedian Rita Rudner stepped onstage at Harrrah’s Showroom on Thursday to introduce the show.

They were even more surprised when Rudner asked the hat ladies to take off their signature towering plumed hats — so the people sitting behind them in the cabaret-style theater could see the stage.

No one wants to be a big meanie about a show featuring an admirable, adorable bunch of older gals. But it has to be said: The 1.5 million worldwide members of the fast-growing, fun-loving sorority for women 50 and older are a juicy, underserved target market, urged to pay cash money (plus a two-drink minimum) for what amounts to a live infomercial for the RHS. Occasionally naughty, mostly cloying and saccharine, the show, at 75 minutes, seemed to stretch out like, well, half a lifetime.

With apparent hopes of imitating the Strip success of “Menopause the Musical” (hitting its second-year mark at the Las Vegas Hilton), “Hats!” is cheery in a cheerleader-y way, an unevenly stitched together (and still somewhat under-rehearsed) patchwork of songs and skits about a “49.999”-year-old woman as she struggles against embracing her age.

Six dolled-up women — members of the Red Hat Society — gather to surprise Maryanne, who is petulantly digging in her heels as the calendar clicks toward 5-0. A fairy godmother of sorts, Ruby (Dolly Coulter does a frantic impression of Joan Crawford in “The Women”) materializes and drags melting-down Maryanne through a disjointed series of monologues and songs. It all ends with a cathartic kick line and an Inspiring Lesson: “If you settle for what you’ve got, you deserve what you get.”

Call it old-girl power.

The between-song sketches, by husband-and-wife team Marcia Milgrom Dodge and Anthony Dodge, sound surprisingly sketchy, considering this show has playing in venues across the country since it made its debut in Denver in 2006. (The script has been modified and adapted for this Las Vegas production.)

Some big-name songwriters contributed numbers to the revue, including Melissa Manchester, Pam Tillis, Henry Krieger and, um, Kathie Lee Gifford.

Several songs do more than preach to the converted, including an amusing number that cleverly lists the symptoms and complaints of aging (rhyming “neurosis” and “osteoporosis”), and the plaintive lament of a mother of three who suddenly finds herself an empty-nester. But the bulk of the show veers between maudlin and manic.

The birthday girl, Maryanne, is played by Kathryn Arionoff, who has a fascinating physical and vocal resemblance to middle-period Tammy Faye Bakker. As the Duchess DeLovely, Maxine Weldon easily dominates the evening with a ribald doo-wop crowd-pleaser, “My Oven’s Still Hot.” As the Contessa Confessa, cocooned in DayGlo-hued Carmen Miranda-styled ruffles, Dolly Coulter affects a Hispanic accent that is embarrassingly con queso.

Somewhere between a school play and an empowerment seminar, “Hats!” seems to be patterned after San Francisco’s long-running must-see tourist draw “Beach Blanket Babylon,” which also has a heroine following an “Oz”-type journey to discovery through a series of pastiche of songs. But “BBB,” which visited Las Vegas in 1988, became world-famous for its iconic cityscape headdresses. Oddly, the actual hats in “Hats!” are little more than an afterthought.