STAGE REVIEW
'Vagina Monologues' challenging but ultimately entertaining

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Theater Critic

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'The Vagina Monologues' A play by Eve Ensler; Loretta Swit takes over from Mackenzie Phillips on Tuesday. Hawaii Theatre; 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays, 5 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 3 $20-$40, at box office and Ticket Plus outlets. Call: 528-0506, 526-4400; group discounts (12 or more), 732-7733 On Maui: Brooke Shields joins Michele Shay and Amy J. Carle at Feb. 7 through Feb. 10 at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's Castle Theatre; $10-$45 at box office. (808) 242-7469.

The operative word in "The Vagina Monologues" is vagina, and it is used to demystify, titillate, liberate, empower and ultimately to entertain. The script by playwright Eve Ensler arose from interviews with 200 women of all ages about that place "down there" that they rarely name, touch, or look at.

The current production has grown into a piece for three interchangeable voices that is a logistical breeze to take on the road, requiring only three stools, microphones, and spotlights, and performers who read from scripts.

The first week of the Honolulu run features Amy J. Carle, Michele Shay and Mackenzie Phillips. Loretta Switt takes over for Phillips during the second week, while Brooke Shields will fill in when the show moves to Maui in February.

Although it's a staged reading of individual monologues, some bits are shared, the audience is involved, and the tone is warmly informal. The material unfolds slowly, like easing into hot water.

First, since "vagina" sounds too much like a disease, the cast recites a list of dozens of regional euphemisms — resonating like poetry from the insulting to the sublime.

Interview questions gingerly pursue the subject.

"If your vagina got dressed up, what would it wear?"

"A tutu." "A slicker." "A sign that says 'closed because of flooding'."

"If your vagina could talk, what would it say?"

"Is that you?" "Slow down." "Enter at your own risk."

As audience sensibilities get toughened up to the vocabulary, the performers settle into the meat of the monologues.

Carle gets the ethnic voices: a Jewish women and a 70-year-old virgin who hasn't considered her vagina since the Eisenhower administration, preferring to regard it as a boarded-up basement, damp with mildew and leaky plumbing.

Shay neatly captures dialects as a Latina complaining at her husband's insistence that she shave her private parts, and a young black girl who finds liberation through a lesbian affair.

Phillips plays the tough characters, notably a former lawyer who finds her true calling as a sex worker who serves other women. This skit builds to a tour de force of run-on sexual climaxes, illustrated by their characteristic moans: "genteel," "southern," "bisexual," etc.

There are some serious moments, with references to genital mutilation and rape, and a dark monologue centered on the atrocities of ethnic war.

The show closes with a moving childbirth sequence that likens the vagina to the human heart in its power to transform and regenerate.

"The Vagina Monologues" plays a tight 90 minutes without intermission. It's always engaging and only selectively offensive.

CORRECTION: The showtimes listed in the information box in a previous edition of this story were incorrect due to a page designer's error.