The Singaporean
production of The Vagina Monologues, directed by The Arts House
Programmes Manager Jonas Abueva and starring Nora Samosir, Cynthia McQuarrie
Lee and Anita Kapoor, could not have arrived any sooner. This provocative,
intensely relevant social dialogue is particularly arresting in its
Singaporean context. What other country can boast of having our unique
struggle with sexuality and gender relations - as characterized
by issues ranging from the SDU to the SPG to the Vietnam Bride? Of course,
there is also something naughtily satisfying about hearing the word
"vagina" reverberate between the hallowed walls of our Old Parliament
building.
The Vagina Monologues was conceived as a series of interviews
conducted on almost 200 women by its author, Eve Ensler. Having gathered
rich material on women's sexuality and lives, it evolved into an award-winning
play that has since touched audiences all over the world. The rich exploration
of "vagina issues" by Ensler ranges from tongue-in-cheek humour about
what women's vaginas would wear or say, the haunting trauma of sexual
violence against women, now-commonplace stories of sexual repression,
and beautiful stories of sexual awakening and pleasure. Abueva's production
combines the complex material and emotions into one compelling fabric.
However, certain irksome things deserve mention up-front. While monologues
are not necessarily easy to perform, in this case the basic story-telling
was weak, with uneven pacing, inconsistent energy levels, and (most
unforgivable) the inability of the actresses to memorise their scripts.
The constant notes-checking was disruptive, even if you listened with
your eyes closed. Samosir was the guiltiest party, even though her stage
presence shone through her trip-ups.
The director's choice of three actresses from different backgrounds,
the result of extensive auditions, was definitely interesting. There
was one seasoned thespian (Samosir), one MediaWorks artiste better-known
as Ah Girl (Lee), and one fashion magazine editor recently venturing
into acting (Kapoor). Yet the director could have made better use of
the ladies' natural chemistry to work each actress' strengths against
one another, instead of simply placing the three side by side, each
waiting for their turns to recite their monologue.
Nonetheless, the actresses each did justice to Ensler's script. Samosir
engaged the audience from the start with her monologue of an elderly
lady who "had not looked down there since 1953". Her rendition of the
woman's self-ingrained disgust with her own sexuality was both funny
and poignant. Her prowess on the stage continued in My Angry Vagina
and I Asked a Six Year Old Girl, where she played an empowered
but disillusioned woman, and a precocious, wide-eyed girl, respectively.
Lee delivered an impressively sensitive performance, detailing war violence
against women in My Vagina Was My Village with the sincerity
to elevate The Vagina Monologues to the level of the universal. However,
to my disappointment, she lacked something more arresting which is necessary
for the stage. Her rendition of a grandmother's wonder upon witnessing
the birth of her grandchild was bland and yet over-sentimental.
Kapoor, perhaps the most consistent of the three actresses, packed
a punch but lacked dramatic colour in places. The Vagina Workshop,
which tells of a woman's discovery of her vagina and sexual pleasure,
was hilarious to begin with, and then dragged. However, Kapoor's pièce
de resistance, and possibly the climax of the production (pardon the
pun), was her simulated orgasms in The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas
Happy. Narrating the piece from the voice of a sex worker who only
works with women, Kapoor's pretend-scientific "list" of orgasms was
a scream (pardon the second pun). As she ran through the "White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant Orgasm" (completely silent), the "Japanese Porn Orgasm" (kitten-like
coyness), the "Bisexual Orgasm" (quite manly), the "Triple Orgasm" (squeaks
of joy peppered with surprised-joy), I could hear the corpse of the
male patriarchy turning in its grave.
After the guffaws had died down, there was still the sense of something
missing in the general scheme of the production: a feisty, liberated,
post-feminist vibe (think Sex and the City). The most powerful
aspects of the monologues, where they portrayed life-changing experiences
which liberated women from lifetimes of repression and self-doubt, lacked
intensity. For instance, in Because He Liked to Look at It,
the narrator tells about a lover who spent hours appreciating the visuals
of her vagina. This led her to shake off her life-long dislike of her
vagina as an ugly thing, leading to a symbolic liberation from the imposed
patriarchal concept of female sexuality as dirty. Painfully, the emotional
punchline that delivered this seminal concept was chopped up into three
awkward parts. Was this due to Samosir's chronic attachment to her script
notes? Or perhaps she and her director were out of sync with the essence
of The Vagina Monologues. |
"After the guffaws had died down, there was still the sense of
something missing in the general scheme of the production"
Previous Productions by The New Voice Company
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