Venue: The Vogue Theatre, Vancouver
Date(s): April 9-14, 2002
Reviewer: Ed Farolan
It's not Chip 'n Dale, but the Vogue was a full house
of women at opening night of Eve Ensler's limited engagegement of
The Vagina Monologues. Women from all walks of life were
having a night out laughing, cheering, and just simply enjoying a
show that should have been labeled "For Women Only".
There were a few of us guys, perhaps curious to find out what makes
this play click. Click it did because from beginning to end, the
actors-Geneva Carr, Mackenzie Phillips and Lisa Tharps got the
audience reeling and laughing, and crying....well, the crying was an
exception to the laughing rule. There was a monologue about the
70,000 women raped during the Bosnian war, and there was a hush in
the audience. But then, almost immediately, back to the stand-up
comics (who were sitting on high bar stools with microphones which
sometimes were annoyingly too loud), who appreciated the Vancouver
female audience spurring them along with their spontaneous comments.
There was wild applause and a standing ovation at the end of the
opening night performance.
All three actors were just excellent-Geneva with the sad rendering of
the raped women in Bosnia; Mackenzie with her moans which got the
audience rolling in the aisles; and Lisa (I heard comments from the
audience saying "She's the best!") with her candid, almost spontaneous
rapport with the audience.
What playwright Eve Ensler did to this 90 minute no-intermission
comedy was gather information from different women on what they
thought of their vagina, and converted these interviews into
monologues, voicing lusty, outrageous, poignant, brave, funny, wise,
mysterious and all the adjectives you can think of about the vagina.
Since the Flower Power movement in the sixties and seventies, women's
lib has grown in leaps and bounds. It sort of withered and became a
thing of the past in the last two decades, but with The Vagina
Monologues, it has resurrected and given a new voice to women.
The play, an Off-Broadway hit which opened with Eve Ensler on October
3, 1999 at the Westside Theatre, has evolved into an international
phenomenon, and in the USA, it has been referred to in several hit
television programs.
The text of The Vagina Monologues has been used in benefit
performances entitled "V-Day" raising millions of dollars to fight
violence against women. At V-Day 2001 which sold out at Madison
Square Garden, Eve Ensler was joined by Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda,
Glenn Close and over 60 other celebrities.
© 2002, Ed Farolan