I walk behind a guy and a girl as the crowd slowly shuffles its way toward the exit after the Vagina Monologues have ended. She turns to him curiously.
"So what'd you think?"
He pauses. "Well.... I thought it was kind of overdone..."
"What??"
"Nothing, nothing"
"No, what did you say?"
"Never mind."
Nothing less should be expected from a production portraying vaginas in all their glory - vagina shape, vagina love, vagina exploration, vagina exploitation, and everything around and in-between. The recent buzz surrounding Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues - a play that stems from her interviews with over 200 women regarding the forbidden topic of "down there" - climaxed on Sunday night as producer Lisa Goodman and directors Erin Dwyer and Rah-nee Kelly led a cast of women in Tufts' version of the show at Cohen Auditorium.
The show left nothing uncovered, so to speak, providing a bonding session for the estrogen-blessed, while giving those without the night's celebrated genitalia a lot to swallow. Call it overkill, call it unnecessary, call it propaganda - whatever it was, it was a good time had by all.
Guys and girls alike screamed "cunt" with all their might.
Orgasms were had. Multiple orgasms.
A cast member's mother won a vibrator.
But the best part about The Vagina Monologues wasn't the in-your-face imagery, nor was it the notion of anything taboo being thrown out the window.
What the play set out to do, and what it did do masterfully, was entertain while at the same time being thoroughly engaging. It engaged females by speaking of topics, ailments, and worries all too familiar. It engaged males who were either curious or clueless - or, if not, they learned a lot more about menstruation than they ever cared to.
The Monologues were just those - a series of monologues presented one at a time by women aching to share the vagina-related business teeming up inside them. Against a simple backdrop of a white sheet, the cast, clad in black, transformed itself into an array of women - aged six to 72 - that shared coming-of-age stories with poise, power, and best of all, humor.
"We are worried about vaginas." Thea Lavin began the night's rap session, joining the entire cast onstage to introduce the evening's topic of conversation. Lavin served wonderfully as the night's comic centerpiece, whether offering up a "Happy Vagina Fact" (The clit has twice the number of nerve fibers than the penis - 'Who needs a handgun when you've got a semi-automatic?'), or wondering what a vagina would say if it could talk - in two words ('Yum Yum'? 'Lick me'?). She represented the comic, campy, direct side of vaginas with relish.
Other highlights included Ariana Wohl as the old woman who kept her "cellar" locked up after an incident involving her first sexual experience and her boyfriend's brand new car. Soon after their first kiss, the woman explained, her "floodgates" of passion literally opened all over the car. Passion left the new car and the woman's life after her beloved called her a "stinky, weird girl."
Wohl shared the woman's experience of humiliation with the perfect combination of comedy and tenderness, making us both laugh at her, with her, and have hope for her future vagina exploration.
Kim Harbin was captivating in "The Little Coochi Snotcher That Could," in which she wove a tale that led from shame to a fascinating twist on a young girl's sexual liberation. She sat simply in a chair throughout the whole monologue, calmly and fluidly telling her story, expressing every detail with just the right infliction. It was simple, understated, and one of the best performances of the night.
That's not to say that subtlety prevailed. Ann Maurer's character in "Because He Liked to Look at It" (introduced as "A woman who had a good experience with a man. They do exist.") spoke of an ordinary, boring man named Bob. Bob was bland. Bob was vanilla. But Bob loved vaginas. And Bob loved her vagina. And that was all she needed.
The female audience reaction to Maurer's performance outdid the male, as it also did when Zo? Hastings brought vagina-related frustration to the stage with "My Angry Vagina." "My vagina is not going away. It is pissed off, and it is staying right here," she proclaimed. In a murderous tirade, she blasphemed man-made oppositions to the vagina - tampons, gynecological exams, thongs - while embracing foreplay and going au natural.
One that everyone could enjoy (and oh, they did) was "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy." Sarah Berger was positively sizzling as a woman who gave up the lifestyle of a corporate lawyer to become a dominatrix. Apparently, there was no dark, mysterious foreplay or moaning involved in the former. And so she made moaning and pleasing women a career. Berger treated the audience to renditions of her favorite moans, full out. Unabashed. We saw and heard, among others, The Clit Moan. The Grace Slick Moan. The Elegant Moan. The Uninhibited, Militant, Bi-Sexual Moan. And last but not least, the Surprise Triple Orgasm Moan. Use your imagination.
It was as good for them as it was for her.
Despite recent criticism surrounding The Vagina Monologues, it was not a production that used vulgarity and explicitness simply for shock value. It wasn't a night about exclusion, and it wasn't about female domination over the male.
The play and its performers were aware of their audience, and spoke for it and to it in an open dialogue, explaining, sharing, and relating so that people would listen.
And the audience did at least listen, if not relate, no matter what lie between their legs. The cast was so powerful, and the subject matter so intriguing, that they simply had to.
And they did at least listen, if not relate, no matter what lie between their legs. Whether you were a feminist who celebrated the vagina's glory, an anti-feminist with a vagina who found something familiar to hold on to, or a male who was a tad overwhelmed, you reacted. The cast was so powerful, and the subject matter was so intriguing, that you simply had to.
