Have I Told You I’m Writing a Play About my Vagina?
The Bunker
Reviewed – 28th July 2019
★★★★
“Vag is boisterous, loud and makes her opinion on penetration clear: She doesn’t like it!”
Have I Told You I’m Writing A Play About My Vagina?, written by Ella Langley and directed by Georgia Figgis, explores the difficult and often uncomfortable relationship between those who are female-identifying and their bodies.
Bea (Christelle Elwin) is a fun-loving university student coming to terms with living with vaginismus, an involuntary muscle contraction of the vagina that makes penetration painful or even impossible. This means that Bea not only struggles with penetrative sex but even putting in a tampon. Throughout the play, Bea chats with Vag (Lottie Amor), a personification of her vagina, as they work together to negotiate a life in which they can both be happy.
Vag is boisterous, loud and makes her opinion on penetration clear: She doesn’t like it! Vag’s pink, puffy skirt nods to pubic hair but it was notable that nothing else about her costume was anatomically inspired. Amor navigates between several roles from Vag to doctor to a motley crew of male suitors all wearing a beanie with ‘MAN’ printed on the front.
The script was highly amusing and there were many laugh out loud moments such as Bea’s awkward sexual encounter with a particularly eager Australian man. The play treats a sensitive and little talked about issue with playfulness and Langley’s decision to write about her personal experience with vaginismus makes the topic altogether more approachable. Amor is gifted most of the humorous lines, but Bea’s oddness and insecurity makes her a highly relatable character.
The chemistry between Bea and Vag grows as the play goes on. Dancing was used well to mirror the pair’s growing relationship. Vag first enters the stage running and moving around the stage with no direction or rhythm flipping off a pained Bea. Slowly, over time, the pair become warmer with each other and begin to touch. By the performance’s end, they slow dance while Elwin sings gently.
The set (Léo Monteiro) was simple: a bed on wheels, a pair of chairs and a toilet on a wheeled platform used only for the play’s opening scene. There was little interaction with these objects outside of their functional purpose which though rather uninspired did allow for focus to remain on the action on stage. A set of turntables and a microphone behind a wooden podium at the centre-back of the stage contributed to some fabulous scenes such as Bea dancing in a club while Vag narrates her efforts to ‘get with’ someone but its use was concentrated in the first half of the play and then seemingly forgotten thereafter. The lighting (Johnny King) flicked between reds and harsh white depending on the tone of the scene.
Langley’s play shines a light on a condition that effects roughly one in five hundred women but is little known. It was wonderful to see Bea grow in confidence throughout the play and proudly talk about her condition with both men and women alike. A particularly good scene saw Bea at a party talk openly about her condition and the women around her instantly open up about their own sexual health issues. This scenario is all too common with Bea explaining that she said nothing previously because she ‘just assumed’ that everyone was ‘having great sex’ and ‘didn’t want to seem unsexy’.
Have I Told You I’m Writing A Play About My Vagina? makes an important statement about having trust in yourself and your body and emphasises the importance of open discussion about female sexuality.
Reviewed by Flora Doble
Have I Told You I’m Writing a Play About my Vagina?
The Bunker
This show is an Edinburgh Festival Fringe preview – click on the logo below for more details
Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
The Interpretation of Dreams | ★★★ | November 2018
Sam, The Good Person | ★★★ | January 2019
Welcome To The UK | ★★ | January 2019
Boots | ★★★★ | February 2019
Box Clever | ★★★★★ | March 2019
Killymuck | ★★★★ | March 2019
My White Best Friend | ★★★★★ | March 2019
Funeral Flowers | ★★★½ | April 2019
Fuck You Pay Me | ★★★★ | May 2019
The Flies | ★★★ | June 2019
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