The sweet irony is that it's both.

If acrobatics and high-concept gimmicks have discouraged modest, old-fashioned displays of singing, dancing and show-tunery, it took the biggest gimmick of all to bring them back.

"Hats!" was created as a custom order for the Red Hat Society, with songs that often sound like TV jingles promoting the social network of women over 50. The implied devil's bargain is that the Society will turn out (literally) by the busload, packing the house with group sales.

The kicker is that this unique arrangement offers moments of rare substance for the Strip to performers who are ready to wring every drop out of them. The standout songs are the serious ones about empty nests and widowhood, not the campy "My Oven's Still Hot" school of entendres that square off with the one-joke parodies of the show's chief rival, "Menopause The Musical."

One song couplet captures the larger divide of the material: "These aren't wrinkles, they're my patina." Nice line, right?

So it's immediately followed by, "I'm a woman of a certain age, and you know what I mean-a."

"Hats!" is a mixed bag in conception as well as execution. It lacks the unifying thread of a single composer because its original tunes were farmed out to several songwriters, some famous such as Pam Tillis and Kathie Lee Gifford, and others known in the music industry, such as Amanda McBroom, who penned Bette Midler's "The Rose."

The solo numbers also stood out because the local version, directed by David Gravatt, hadn't yet attained the ensemble feel of "Menopause" at its unveiling last week. Most of the rehearsal time apparently went to deciding what would be cut from a 90-minute regional theater edition.

After a few "soft" performances, the final product barely clocks in at a perfunctory 65 minutes, 10 shorter than Gravatt's originally announced goal. Without knowing what was cut, and whether it's any better than what stayed, one can only hope the full version is a little less scattershot in its attempt to cover all the numbers on the bingo card.

As it stands, the songs speak more eloquently than the brief dialogue connecting the plight of Maryanne (Kathryn Arianoff), who is freaked out about turning 50 until a "fairy god-sister" (Terry Palasz) introduces her to the fun ladies of the Red Hat Society.

One of them happens to be Maryanne's own mother, played by Jalayne Reiwerts. She and Maxine Weldon are the senior cast members who give the greeting-card lyrics a gravity they might not otherwise deserve and bring to life the show's message that "50 is the youth of old age."

The younger energy is ably supplied by Las Vegas veterans Corrie Sachs as a stereotyped career woman and Dolly Coulter as the Carmen Miranda-style comic sidekick.

Jane Kinsey has the show's most poignant moment with "My Empty Nest," as she attempts to substitute sofa-pillow shopping for the houseful of schoolboys who once kept the place busy, dirty and noisy. (Kinsey also plays Maryanne at some performances, with other roles rotated by two actors not in the show on this night, Toni Malone and Lynn Steinhurst.)

"Hats!" is collectively wrapped in appealingly classy stage and costume designs, with a live band in full view of the audience on a side stage. If it nonetheless succeeds only in fits and spurts, it still feeds plenty of applause lines to a target audience that's likely to be very forgiving until the cast hits a more collective stride.

It's not like the messages don't apply to the rest of us: "If you settle for what you get, you deserve what you get," and the like. Too bad then that you might feel like you crashed the party if you don't wear a red hat, or go with someone who does.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0288.