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Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself at Ovalhouse, London
Visceral ... Bella Heesom, left, with Sara Alexander in Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself at Ovalhouse, London. Photograph: David Monteith-Hodge
Visceral ... Bella Heesom, left, with Sara Alexander in Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself at Ovalhouse, London. Photograph: David Monteith-Hodge

Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva … review – listen to this clitoris

This article is more than 4 years old

Ovalhouse, London
Nothing feels gratuitous in Bella Heesom’s bold and poetic play about female sexuality which ends in catharsis not climax

More than 20 years ago, Eve Ensler dared to say the word “vagina” on stage and became a groundbreaking force for it. “I say it because it’s an invisible word – a word that stirs up anxiety, awkwardness, contempt and disgust,” she explained at the start of The Vagina Monologues.

The writer and actor Bella Heesom might be considered Ensler’s millennial heir, brandishing not just the word “vulva” on stage like a hot iron but also embodying a clitoris, dramatising female masturbation, describing genital shame and joy, and getting naked on stage with her co-star, Sara Alexander.

It is no surprise that Sid Gentle Films, the producer of the Bafta-winning Killing Eve, is developing a television adaptation. Despite its explicit nature, nothing in this bold and poetic production, directed by Donnacadh O’Briain, appears gratuitous. But it is not the playful, skit-based comedy that it first seems either, even if the set resembles a corny 1980s Timotei advert with a wooden swing at one end of the stage, lavender-like fronds streaming down from it like a flower garden, and dimmed lighting that creates a soft-focus effect.

The women play the divided self: Alexander embodies a talking clitoris caught between innocence and unabashed lasciviousness and demanding pleasure (“I want my explosion!” she cries when Heesom priorities her male partner’s orgasm and denies her own). Alexander is a charismatic performer, both cute and carnal. Heesom is the restrained ego to her id, pulling her up on how female sexuality ought to be performed for the outside rather than lived from the inside.

Soft-focus effect ... Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself. Photograph: David Monteith-Hodge

The sparring, sparky dialogue between them becomes darker and more pained as Heesom narrates her sexual coming-of-age, from the joyous simplicity of her first orgasm to the guilt-racked pleasure of masturbation and then, later, the learning – and unlearning – that takes her into womanhood. “The fierce woman you lust after and admire has shrunk into a small, silent thing,” Heesom tells an invisible male lover while trussed up in (imaginary) lingerie and trapped in his male gaze.

In its starkest moments, the play exposes the insidious double standards of socially engineered female sexuality that requires women to guard their virginity but also give it up, when required, so they are not deemed “frigid” or “uncool”; and to be embarrassed to admit to masturbation but also to perform lust and readiness for men. Heesom peels away the layers of this conditioning to show what sexual authenticity lies beneath.

The women occasionally perform synchronised movements to music, their limbs knitting together but also wrestling and attempting to crush the other into submission. It works for the main part, though Liz Ranken’s movement direction sometimes looks like sexed-up capoeira.

The show is occasionally too earnest and over-explains itself but these glitches, and others, are drowned out by the glittering poetry in Heesom’s script, so vivid and visceral that sometimes the stagecraft feels redundant in comparison to the glory and guts of the words. Alexander describes their joint orgasms as “the sun inside us just for a second”, and later as “a million sparklers going off in my head”.

The performance ends with catharsis, and it is followed by a shorter second part, shaped as an after-show discussion with the audience sitting on cushions around the actors. We are invited, though not obliged, to share intimacies on sex and self-image. As well-intentioned as this workshop-style ending may be, it resembles a socially awkward group therapy session with an uncomfortably pedagogic air and undercuts the searing poetry that came before it. Better to go home after the main act, invigorated by the wondrousness of vulvas.

  • Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself is at Ovalhouse, London, until 25 May.

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