It was no surprise that a San Francisco audience for the play “A Round Heeled Woman” appeared to be mostly women of a certain age. Women old enough to remember when women didn’t talk about their sex lives. Old enough to remember when women were thought to give it up after oh, age 50 or so. And old enough to appreciate the difference between then and now.

We were also old enough to remember Sharon Gless as the clever, smart-talking, sometimes grumpy cop Christine Cagney in Cagney and Lacey. And now here she was on stage playing Jane Juska, the 66-year-old English teacher from Berkeley who went looking for sex in a personal ad in the New York Review of Books. It read: “Before I turn 67 –next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” Anthony Trollope being her favorite writer.

Juska wrote a best-seller sharing her results – she got over 60 replies from men as young as her son and older than her ex-husband and hooked up with a few. Some were cads, some near-creepy, some quite interesting who did, indeed, want to talk first.

The play, which premiered at Z Space theater in San Francisco in January, was adapted from her book of the same name. Early reviews of the play were not real positive and it closed in early February. But it had sell-out crowds and I hope it tours because there is definitely an audience ripe for the message that not only can the earth move at any age. But, more important, if you’re missing something in your life, stop waiting for it to knock on your door. Go get it.

I met Juska several years ago when she did an author reading at the Sonoma County Book Festival. There, too, her audience was Boomer women and beyond, who roundly cheered Juska’s bravado. One woman told Juska she as much envied her lively conversations with men as she did her orgasms.

Her book came out in 2003, before the cougar phenom. Before online dating became a routine way of meeting a life partner. And before nightly Viagra ads showed older couples chasing each other down the beach.

About that same time “Something’s Gotta Give” put Diane Keaton under the covers with Jack Nicholson and Hollywood started warming up to mature sex. Last year “It’s Complicated,” touted as a middle aged sex comedy, provided 60-year-old Meryl Streep with two lovers.

Ads for “The Last Station,” a movie based on the last year of Leo Tolstoy’s life show Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren romping in bed. More evidence that sex is not just for the young and nubile.

Sharon Gless was plenty nubile in her role as a passionate, vulnerable, complex woman and the audience gave her a standing ovation. As to what’s happened since then to the real Jane Juska, the woman sitting next to me had an answer. Juska, she’d read, had settled down happily with one man. But he’s married.

That was a surprise because in the play she vows to never go out with a married man or a Republican. Well, at least we can assume he knows his Trollope.

Photo of Sharon Gless in “A Round-Heeled Woman.”