THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES/KISSA YONI KA Play Review

Eve Ensler's Obie award winning global play THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES has been playing to full houses. First staged in 2003 in India by Kaizad and Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal's Poor Box Productions in Mumbai, the play continues to draw a niche audience due to its taboo breaking theme, which has managed to find resonance in over 70 countries with varying cultures. Poor Box Productions also has a Hindi version titled KISSA YONI KA.

If a vagina could speak, what would it say? That's the question. The different answers given by women of varying ages, status and personal histories form the ten to twelve monologues that make up the play. These monologues have reportedly shocked and scandalised people around the world.

The question itself is simple, and answers spring up instantly as they emerge from histories of neglect, repression, abuse, mutilation, child-birth and surgical interventions. The play's script scores low for its predictable answers, and lacks in the creative wit one would expect from a good writer. The Hindi version too did not get much leeway to adapt beyond the known cultural specifics, but it does manage to add an Indian 'tadka' on occasions. Similes and metaphors pour in from all directions, but sound quite remote.

Predictably, the play takes the audience through the vagina nomenclature, which reads like a grocery list, and then flirts with the surrounding paraphernalia - the smell, the hair, the menses, the taboos, and the fears that surround intimacy and contact. The actors speak too fast though, and before the first impressions have sunk in, a new chapter begins. The Hindi version uses old movie songs whose lyrics when doubly interpreted fit the topic of the next monologue. It is not very amusing though when Kishore Kumar becomes the starting point of the old Parsi woman's first intimate encounter, and celebrity film stars of the 60s float through her secretions.

The play then proceeds to bolder themes. The audience is primed through that one explicit word, which still outrages decency in educated circles. While the English script is laborious when it plays through the phonetic elements of 'cunt', the Hindi version isn't better in its mostly parallel interpretation, and the 'chut dance' with the drum and a traditional limerick isn't very funny. The multiple orgasm act by the 'professional' is overdone and passable. There is one lesbian encounter played out in rosy details.

The monologues come in quick succession and give little pause for thought or reflection. It is not clear what message the play intends to send. There is nothing new to learn, and the references to social issues surrounding women get overshadowed by the strong sexual overtones. This play has spawned two global movements: the V-Day and V-Girls, intended to tackle the social issues of violence and abuse, raise funds, and put young girls in control of their bodies. Worthy causes, but the play creates doubts about how wise it is to make a spectacle of an organ. At its best, the play is a popular extension of school sex education courses for the masses, and for the oldies who missed it at school!

*Amit Sharma works for a knowledge consultancy firm, and writes to make it meaningful.