The word 'vagina' appears here twice; vagina

There's a rewriting of Genesis going on in the Berkeley performance area, and it strays pretty far from the original. "A long, long time ago," Garrett Graddy, BK '00, proclaims, "it was all black." The lights in the theater remain dim. "And out of that darkness emerged the vagina." There is a pause for effect. "And out of that emerged everything else."

That's right, they're here: the Vagina Monologues have returned to Yale, and they are as genitaliocentric as ever. Intended as a response to the relative lack of public discourse regarding that very special part of the female body, the Monologues deliver what they promise: a series of speeches, interspersed with the occasional conversation or factoid, all on the topic of vaginas. What makes this performance intriguing, however, is hardly the novelty of its subject. The shock value wanes after the first iteration of vulgar nicknames. Rather, the Monologues pack their emotional punch through the performances of a few of their best actors, who are talented and audacious enough to talk about genitalia onstage.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Note to self: read my lips.

The play's lead, if it has one, is Eve Ensler (Desiree Burch, TD '01), the Monologues' real-life author and interviewer. Serving as a sort of Vagina Monologues emcee, Burch introduces the other women, comments upon their stories, and delivers a few scath-ing tirades of her own regarding the nature of vaginal living. The overwhelming stage presence of Burch, complete with her searching eyes and booming voice, goes far in maintaining coherency in a play of disconnected pieces.

The monologues themselves become most engaging when the actresses deliver them well. Amanda Young, BR '02, and Emily Lodish, TD '03, each succeed in hitting the opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, respectively invoking hilarity and tragedy through their solo performances. Young, embodying the fantasy of many a sexually-frustrated lawyer, plays an attorney-turned-dominatrix, gleefully exalting in the perks of her newfound profession. In demonstrating the various moans of women that she has serviced, Young outdoes Meg Ryan tenfold by delivering a series of fake orgasms that last at least five minutes and range in variety from the "surprise triple orgasm" to the repressed silence of the "WASP" climax. An embarrassed audience laughs out of discomfort, sure—but it's also just funny to see someone mimic the convulsions of the "machine-gun" moaner, a task into which Young dives with flair.

Lodish's performance works wonders as well, but in striking contrast to Young's. It garners no laughs, for good reason—her monologue describes a Bosnian woman's horrific experience with rape. Glaring at the audience with an expression that alternates between defiance and despair, Lodish chooses to deliver her speech with an understated bitterness and quiet demeanor that takes perfect advantage of the emotional impact of her narrative. Without yelling, crying, or even really grimacing, she relates the horror of her character's experience without resorting to the melodrama that would have obscured its intensity.

The same cannot be said of all the actors' performances, however, and the occasional overacting elevates the vagina to such a position that one cannot help but suspect some sort of obsessive complex on the part of the most zealous of its venerators. It is in the midst of such monologues that the premise of the play becomes a bit tedious; as Burch points out, the word vagina "sounds like an infection, at best," and it becomes grating to hear it repeated during the performance's less engaging monologues. The format of the Monologues ensures that no single character is onstage alone for long, however, which keeps the performance from becoming too bogged down in its somewhat restrictive premise.

This simplicity of theme parallels the simplicity of director Clelia Peter's, BK '00, set design. The backdrop of the Monologues consists only of a single chair set against a vertically hung blood-red curtain, in what appears to be a sort of shrine to, well...you figure it out. For variety's sake, the chair is sometimes removed, and an occasional character will appear onstage with a splash of red spicing up her otherwise all-black costume. The relative lack of visual variety adds to the impact of the performance, as black costumes against a red background cannot help but focus one's attention on the character onstage. The director's reluctance to alter the setting emphasizes the intensity of focus upon these specific women, and upon the content of what they have to say.

This focus on the women relates to the overriding purpose of the Vagina Monologues, which is more than just to entertain or titillate. The performances this weekend are part of the larger "V-Day 2000" initiative to raise awareness about women's issues. The proceeds from the sold-out shows, according to Peter, are to be donated to Lifehaven, a shelter for battered women. As it supports these causes, the Vagina Monologues attempts to convince us that "our future depends on this monologue"—that the frank and often incessant discussion of vaginas will help us to solve social ills. Though it would be impossible to maintain a consistently high level of, as one character calls it, "vaginal wonder" through the entire production, at its most powerful points the show confirms the power of discussion.

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