Theatre review: “The Vagina Monologues”

Like a self-lubricating “Our Town,” Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” has become a perennial favorite across all levels of amateur and professional theatre. Both deal with themes of life and death, and both carry a powerful message either uninhibited or enhanced by the skill of the actor.

Even as America’s Beloved Porn Journalist I rarely get the opportunity to attend live theatre not featuring a donkey, so I was eager to see Antioch University of Los Angeles’ production of the play. I’d seen two professional productions before, one each in New York and Chicago, and the Antioch version features Nina Hartley and 14 other women, ably directed by Lesley Alexander.

Ensler debuted the play in Greenwich Village in 1996 and it has since become a worldwide phenomenon. A rotating series of monologues, all penned by Ensler and covering themes from humorous to grave to poignant to poetic, “VM” is a rare theatrical experience that is never not thought-provoking.

Every piece of praise and criticism you’ve heard about “The Vagina Monologues” is likely true. In its mission statement as a wakeup call and rallying cry for activism and education about rape, self-exploration, and sexual health, it contains powerful messages that I imagine are revelations to audiences hearing them for the first time.

But to a metropolitan crowd in a re-purposed university classroom, where this production plays, The “VM” seemed almost quaint and folksy.

“Look at these frontier women embracing their vaginas,” I said, but not out loud.

My favorite monologues included “My Angry Vagina,” in which Charlisse Bennett rails against the indignities of vagina-unfriendly gynecological exams, Sandra Daugherty’s deliciously overindulgent “Reclaiming Cunt,” Hartley’s interpretation of the lawyer-turned-dominatrix essay “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” (Hartley used the collared director to illustrate some of the moans the domme elicited from her clients), and Dr. Claudia Shields’ elegant delivery of “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could.”

It is the latter monologue that tends to be a critical lightning rod.

The story of an adolescent survivor of rape at the hands of her father’s friend, “Coochie Snorcher” then finds the girl willingly seduced by an older woman, who feeds her vodka and blows her mind.

Early versions of the monologue placed the girl at 13 and included the line, “if it was rape, it was good rape.”

Later editions, edited due to outrage, made the girl 16 and omitted the “rape” line. But in a play in which a six-year-old describes her vagina as smelling like “snowflakes,” it seems like there is also room for the original, unedited “Coochie Snorcher.” Ensler was not saying that rape is good only if women do it, but that you have to do rape right.

Who knows? If the girl had been attracted to her father’s friend and he was kind? If he knew how to make a good Gimlet … ?

Men are not portrayed favorably in “The Vagina Monologues.” When they are mentioned, they are most often rapists. Only in “Because He Liked To Look At It” does a man find validation because he likes to gaze respectfully at the narrator’s vagina, and that piece is introduced with vocabulary indicating that this good but otherwise boring and not-too-smart man is an exception.

But I don’t have a problem with how men figure in “The Vagina Monologues” because I can watch everything from “Glengarry Glen Ross” to “A Streetcar Named Desire” to just about any movie ever made to see dicks as the protagonist.

My problem with every “VM” I’ve seen is that the play preaches empowerment and tolerance at the exclusion of men. The play would be braver if it were less lopsided, and I resent the “Kill Whitey” attitude. Did I repress your vagina? But the message of the show seems to be that vagina-consciousness needs to play catch-up after millenia of neglect.

15 years in, the vaginal celebration of the “Monologues” can sometimes seem like latecomers stridently “discovering” a band you’re already into.

“ISN’T LED ZEPPELIN AWESOME?” they’ll shriek. “HAVE YOU HEARD THESE GUYS? HOLY SHIT! YOU HAVE GOT TO LISTEN TO ‘KASHMIR.'”

“You’re preaching to the choir, friend,” I will say, “I’ve loved Led Zeppelin and vaginas my entire life.”

“The Vagina Monologues” is always provocative and you will be impressed with the Antioch production, continuing through tomorrow night.

Buy tickets here.

Better watch out, though: Antioch fucking rapes you on the parking.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Lou & Amy & Joe & Evanka: Coming to terms with your celebrity sex tape
See also: V-Day

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Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

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