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| The Vagina Monologues - review | The Vagina Monologues - review |
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| If Nancy Dell'Olio's vagina got dressed up, it would wear Harry Winston diamonds. At least, it would according to Eve Ensler's show, inspired by interviews with hundreds of women about their vaginas. The Vagina Monologues were written in the 1990s, long before anyone had even thought of the vajazzle. | If Nancy Dell'Olio's vagina got dressed up, it would wear Harry Winston diamonds. At least, it would according to Eve Ensler's show, inspired by interviews with hundreds of women about their vaginas. The Vagina Monologues were written in the 1990s, long before anyone had even thought of the vajazzle. |
| The enormously game Dell'Olio, a woman who is larger than life, twice as orange and knows how to laugh at herself, was one of the performers taking part for free on Sunday night in a charity benefit supporting Thanet-based charity the Oasis Domestic Abuse Service, as part of the V Day movement, a campaign dedicated to ending violence against women. | The enormously game Dell'Olio, a woman who is larger than life, twice as orange and knows how to laugh at herself, was one of the performers taking part for free on Sunday night in a charity benefit supporting Thanet-based charity the Oasis Domestic Abuse Service, as part of the V Day movement, a campaign dedicated to ending violence against women. |
| Performed in 140 countries in 50 languages The Vagina Monologues has become less a theatrical phenomenon and more an evangelical crusade. Although whether reclaiming the word "cunt" via audience participation will do anything to help the one in three women who, according to the UN, will experience rape or beating during their lives, is doubtful. | Performed in 140 countries in 50 languages The Vagina Monologues has become less a theatrical phenomenon and more an evangelical crusade. Although whether reclaiming the word "cunt" via audience participation will do anything to help the one in three women who, according to the UN, will experience rape or beating during their lives, is doubtful. |
| Everyone else – including those fine actresses Rita Tushingham, Pauline McLynn and Joanna Scanlon – turned up in little black cocktail dresses. Dell'Olio turned up in what looked like her underwear and played shamelessly to the gallery. Or she would have, if the tiny 50-seater Tom Thumb – one of the smallest theatres in the world – had a gallery. It doesn't. But it does have flock wallpaper and plush pink seats that are reputed to be haunted. It's a gorgeous little chocolate box theatre. | Everyone else – including those fine actresses Rita Tushingham, Pauline McLynn and Joanna Scanlon – turned up in little black cocktail dresses. Dell'Olio turned up in what looked like her underwear and played shamelessly to the gallery. Or she would have, if the tiny 50-seater Tom Thumb – one of the smallest theatres in the world – had a gallery. It doesn't. But it does have flock wallpaper and plush pink seats that are reputed to be haunted. It's a gorgeous little chocolate box theatre. |
| Dell'Olio – who is apparently planning a West End show, The Powder Room, based on her own life story – clearly hadn't been taking any acting tips from former beau, the theatre director, Trevor Nunn. But it hardly matters. Like everyone else, she lets her vagina do the talking. | Dell'Olio – who is apparently planning a West End show, The Powder Room, based on her own life story – clearly hadn't been taking any acting tips from former beau, the theatre director, Trevor Nunn. But it hardly matters. Like everyone else, she lets her vagina do the talking. |
| When Ensler appeared in the show in the West End, her New York therapy speak was so grating and twee that my aghast vagina wanted to make a break for the exit. Here, the lack of polish that comes with a single rehearsal combined with consummate comic timing makes the whole thing less slick and more honest and human. | |
| There are still moments to make your toes curl, including a six-year-old's statement that her vagina smells like "snowflakes", and even the superb Scanlon can't make the famous "my vagina is a village" speech about a Bosnian woman's experience of rape sound like anything but sanitised bad poetry. | There are still moments to make your toes curl, including a six-year-old's statement that her vagina smells like "snowflakes", and even the superb Scanlon can't make the famous "my vagina is a village" speech about a Bosnian woman's experience of rape sound like anything but sanitised bad poetry. |
| But Scanlon comes into her own in the Vagina Workshop sketch, in which a woman examines her vagina with a mirror for the first time and feels "how early astronomers must have felt with primitive telescopes", and Amy Lamé was a hoot as the lawyer turned dominatrix. | |
| Even when it's for a good cause, the show still feels like a contrivance, and some sections including Dell'Olio's "angry vagina" rant are no more than fillers. But the goodwill of those performing carries the evening, even if Ensler's suggestion that we are defined by our genitalia is as outdated as a 1970s consciousness-raising meeting. |