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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

Box Clever | ★★★★★ | March 2019

My White Best Friend | ★★★★★ | March 2019

Funeral Flowers | ★★★½ | April 2019

Fuck You Pay Me | ★★★★ | May 2019

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com

★★★

“with some fine-tuning and syncopation there is quite a stunning show buried in there somewhere”

Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, “The Flies” (Les Mouches), is a complicated and serious affair, perhaps overburdened with symbolism and allegory. At its core is the myth of Orestes and Electra, who murder their mother and her lover in order to seek revenge for the death of their father. Sartre took many sweeping liberties with the story, bending it to fit in with his philosophical leanings at the time – having spent nine months as a prisoner of war. Equating the ancient Greek city of Argos with occupied France, the themes of revenge are replaced by quite laborious and introspective questions about freedom.

Described as a thriller, the text is not necessarily thrilling in itself, but Exchange Theatre certainly know how to strip it bare and dress it up again in a multi-coloured cloak of ideas and invention. Set in a dystopian world without any real reference to time or place, the themes acquire a contemporary poignancy, where the Gods are video screens from which the black-clad, Klansman-like, ‘Avenging Furies’ steal the hard drives from their broken chassis. It is a scene unrecognisable by Orestes (Samy Elkhatib) who is returning home fifteen years after his father’s murder. Finding his people under the oppression of guilt and fear he seeks out his sister, Electra (Meena Rayann), and persuades her to help him exact his revenge and ultimately try to free his townspeople.

Underscored by a live, power-driven rock band the premise is exciting, but the raw promise of the opening moments soon wanders into a maze of confusion. Director David Furlong (who also plays the usurping tyrant Aegisthus) has swamped the action in a riot of ideas which battle with each other. This is no bad thing, and we must applaud the idea of theatre reflecting the disquieting uncertainty of our times; and this company does that with a real punch. “The Flies” is about fighting for liberty against misguided populist powers, but the energy expended in this production is just as misguided. Too much writhing and unneeded robotic movement cloud the intention and, while the music (and occasional raucous singing) embraces the rebellious punk ethic, it lacks the edge. It all comes across as a bit messy. Sartre’s script is replete with ‘what-ifs’ as it explores its philosophical paths: this show, too, is built on ‘what-ifs’, as a succession of ideas are played out in front of us as though being workshopped.

But there is no denying that this is a visual and aural treat, although the most affecting moments are when the actors are left alone on the stage with nothing but their dialogue. Overall, though, subtlety isn’t the object here. ‘The Flies’ is being performed alternately in French and English, so to a certain extent we are obviously liberated from the reliance on the language. This is no rock opera, but with some fine-tuning and syncopation there is quite a stunning show buried in there somewhere.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Camille Dufrénoy

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.

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 Bunker

Reviewed – 13th June 2019

★★★

“with some fine-tuning and syncopation there is quite a stunning show buried in there somewhere”

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Camille Dufrénoy

The Flies

The Bunker until 6th July

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: