The Vagina Monologues

For those of you uninitiated in the world of “The Vagina Monologues”, a series of ‘vagina interviews’ were carried out by Eve Ensler, who later developed them into a selection of monologues forming the basis of the production. As somebody who has previously both directed and acted in charity performances of “The Vagina Monologues” I was looking forward to watching something so familiar and intrigued to see the response of my mother, a vagina monologue ‘virgin’! As in many professional productions of the monologues the cast list was designed to pull in a crowd who might otherwise have been deterred by the play’s title, and as in almost all performances the audience was predominantly female! The three particular celebrities in this case were Sharon D Clarke, Nikki Sanderson and Linda Robson who rose to the challenges of the roles with varying degrees of success. Nikki Sanderson (Coronation Street, Heartbeat) was the youngest member of the cast and took on many of the more comic and sexual monologues, she deserves congratulations for her bravery in taking on the challenges of recreating orgasms onstage, but her performance disappointingly showed little variation or differentiation between the monologues. Linda Robson (Birds of a Feather) appeared rather uncomfortable on stage, this could be attributed to the extremely tall stools on which all three actresses perched, although she confidently bantered with the audience she did not appear to connect with the characters she portrayed. It was Sharon D Clarke (Holby City) who stole the show, taking a number of the more poignant and often harrowing monologues including that of a young Bosnian girl being raped (“My Vagina, My Village”) which had many members of the audience in tears. It was perhaps my own knowledge of the script which made much of the ad-libbing and audience interaction appear overly staged (the audience themselves joining in with varying degrees of enthusiasm) and often the over-used opportunities for extra jokes seemed to distract from the carefully written prose of the monologues. “The Vagina Monologues” continues at The Churchill Theatre, Bromley until September 12th.

• Type: admin
• Performance Date: 07/09/2009
• Star rating: 12345