OK, so I lied. But just a little. And not on purpose.

A few months ago, when I reviewed “Jersey Boys” for Living Las Vegas, I mentioned that I rarely attend Las Vegas shows, especially musicals. Recently, though, a friend gave me two free tickets to “Menopause The Musical” at the Las Vegas Hilton. With my column deadline looming, the lure of free tickets, and my friend’s glowing recommendation (“It’s laugh-out-loud funny”), my wife and I braved a cold, blustery, late-December night to see the show.

Before I tell you what I thought of it, let me explain my special fondness for the Hilton. My history with the hotel goes back to 1974, when I made my first of many trips to Las Vegas. (Like most locals, before I became a Las Vegas resident, I was a frequent visitor.)

I was 19, living in Southern California and just beginning my lifelong love/hate relationship with gambling. (It runs in the family and I’m convinced it’s genetic – the subject for a future column.) My buddy Frank and I spent that summer poring over Mike Goodman’s paperback “Your Best Bet” as well as Edward Thorp’s seminal blackjack classic “Beat the Dealer.” For months, we practiced our strategy and card-counting techniques, alternating as player and dealer. Believe me when I say that if I could have transferred some of my practice luck to the actual tables, I’d be a high roller today. Or homeless. These things can go either way.

Finally, we were ready. I grew a beard to cover my baby face, stuffed a little more than 200 bucks in my wallet, and threw a suitcase in the back of Frank’s battered VW van. Five hours later (the van struggled up those steep grades), we found ourselves on the Fabulous Strip. Although vacant parcels of land outnumbered the hotels back then, Las Vegas still impressed the hell out of me, as did the 109-degree heat.

We stayed at the Tam O’Shanter motel because rooms were $19 a night and included a fun book with deals for joints like Mr. Sy’s, home of the free beef stew (which I wisely decided to forgo). With the adrenalin surging through my body, I made my first casino blackjack bet ever – an Eisenhower dollar – at the Holiday Inn Center Strip, a riverboat replica which years later morphed into Harrah’s. I won, eventually turning my $20 buy-in into $75. I kept waiting for security to toss me out, but they never did. Lesson: It’s all about appearances; if you act like you belong, nobody will give you a second glance.

My second session was at the El Morocco, where I pocketed another $50. Frank won, too. To this day, he has the most incredible luck I’ve ever seen. We celebrated that night by hitting the all-you-can eat buffet at the Silver Slipper. The roast beef was as tough as a baseball mitt, but I didn’t know any better. For the princely sum of $1.99 (if memory serves), it seemed like the best deal in the world.

Later, we took in the late show at the Hilton. Alone on a stool, Bill Cosby kept us in stitches for an hour, advising all the losers in the audience to march on the casino en masse, grabbing handfuls of chips along the way. After getting the crowd worked up to a fever pitch, he mentioned, almost as an aside, “Now, some of you will die.” That calmed the audience down considerably. What a buzz kill.

After having spent the day in “grind joints,” I was unprepared for the grandeur of the Hilton. Its subdued blue color scheme and hushed tone seemed like something out of a James Bond flick (indeed, the property was featured in the 1971 Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever”). With more than 3,000 rooms, its size was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. In those days, the Hilton was the largest hotel in the world. Beginning life in 1969 as the International Hotel, it was the scene of Elvis’ fabled return to Las Vegas. Over the years, he played there dozens of times. When Al Dvorin made the legendary announcement “Elvis has left the building,” the building he referred to was often the Hilton. (I always planned on seeing Elvis but somehow never got around to it. In 1977, I learned a valuable lesson: Don’t wait.)

The next night, Frank and I returned to the Hilton to watch political comedian Mort Sahl play to a sparse audience in the lounge. Sahl’s once-thriving career was on a long downhill slide even then. His hard-edged humor proved to be a bad fit for tourists from the Midwest, many of whom stormed out when the Nixon-bashing got to be too much for them.

Fast-forward more than three decades. The Hilton had fallen off my radar screen, supplanted by newer, bigger, flashier mega-resorts. So when my wife and I walked in (I bet you thought I’d never get back to “Menopause The Musical”), it looked nothing like I remembered. Except for the vaunted race and sports Superbook (which puts NASA’s Mission Control to shame), the place seemed rather ordinary, even tired. I know, asking it to compete with a young man’s memories is a no-win proposition. Still, as we took our seats in the intimate (OK, cramped) Shimmer Cabaret, I found myself mildly depressed. Fortunately, the phrase “laugh-out-loud funny” again came to mind, buoying my expectations.

According to the program, “Menopause The Musical” began in a 76-seat Orlando, Fla., theater in 2001. It opened at the Hilton on Feb. 23, 2006. It has been seen by nearly 10 million people in more than 150 cities in 12 countries – a major success story by any standard.

The vast majority of audience members were women of a certain age (including my wife) who could easily relate to the material. An attractive forty-something woman with a floor-length ponytail warmed up the crowd by offering “hot-flash fans” for a dollar, the proceeds going to fight ovarian cancer. Just before the lights went down, she asked everyone to turn their cell phones to “vibrate,” putting a particularly suggestive emphasis on the word. Big yucks. We were off to a promising start.

The show began promptly at 7 p.m. The story is told primarily through 28 song parodies sung by four archetypal women: an aging soap star, an African-American businesswoman, a former hippie and a heavyset Iowa housewife. All the action takes place on a simple set representing Bloomingdale’s department store, or “Bloomies.”

The opening number is “Change of Life,” sung to the tune of “Chain of Fools.” Other songs include “Stayin’ Awake” and “Night Sweatin’,” part of a “Saturday Night Fever” medley, and a “Puff the Magic Dragon” variation that includes the line, “Puff, My Butt is Draggin’.” The songs cover all the bases: reduced sex drive, weight gain, lack of sleep, chocolate cravings, wrinkles. One running gag – you should pardon the expression – involves the women visiting the bathroom every five minutes or so. The performers sing with energy and enthusiasm, and all are consummate professionals. Sandra Benton as the businesswoman and Cheryl Spencer as the ex-hippie stand out with strong, versatile voices.

And yet. After 10 minutes, my wife leaned over and whispered, “I’m bored.” So was I. Because “Menopause The Musical” is essentially a one-joke show, and the joke is milked for all it’s worth. Individually, the songs are clever and a few even reach the level of hilarity, but collectively the effect is mind-numbing. (And ass-numbing. The seats are one notch above bridge chairs.) Some of the songs, such as the “Only You” tribute sung by the women to their vibrators, seem out of place. And “I’m Having a Hot Flash,” a parody of “Tropical Heat Wave,” is sung not once but twice, in two different styles. At 90 minutes, the show feels padded; the company could easily trim 20 of those minutes to better effect.

Now, to be fair, my wife and I are in the minority here. The audience had a wonderful time, laughing boisterously from start to finish – all except for an Asian gentleman at the end of our row, who slept through the whole thing despite the seats. At the end, when the four performers discarded their frumpy clothes to reveal sexy cocktail dresses to the strains of “New Attitude,” the room erupted in cheers. So take my review with a grain of salt – and a shot of bio-identical hormones.