On New Year’s Eve of 1991, on the brink of our first Persian Gulf adventure, a naked Karen Finley stood onstage in a New York club to deliver a harrowing rant against George H. W. Bush and his service to patriarchy, all while running a hundred yards of yellow ribbon between her legs. This was, to put it mildly, a challenging and riveting spectacle: Finley’s vulnerability and her ferocious power both arose from her primordial trust in her body, and her willingness to risk that body for her convictions. Now, famously, Eve Ensler has made the confessional, politically charged performance pioneered by Finley and others safe for the Oxygen Network. Metropolis Performing Arts Centre’s new production of Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues” manages to be both spare and lavish; the set design, like the play itself, is somewhere between school assembly and awards show. The performers deliver Ensler’s monologues and “vagina facts” with wit and energy, though also with a few too many contrived accents for my taste. Lucinda Johnston deserves special recognition for her heroic encyclopedia of orgasmic moans. But in the end, to take the show seriously you have to hear “I am my vagina” as a statement of liberation, to view the lover who tells one woman that her inner beauty is located in her cunt as a hero, not a creep. Maybe I’m just a dick, but I have trouble seeing the trajectory from tax lawyer to lesbian dominatrix as a map to the promised land. (John Beer)
This production is now closed.
Related Stories
A Glocal Celebration: Red Clay Dance Company presents La Femme Dance Festival at the Green Line Performing Arts Center This biennial festival celebrates dancemakers whose work is grounded in African and African Diasporic forms and provides presentation and professional development opportunities for this historically underrepresented group in concert dance.- Everyday Framework: A Preview of "Performing Home" at Links Hall Local dance curator Cynthia Bond presents an Illinois Humanities-supported partner program of space, memory, and the invisible social bonds and barriers that inform them.
- Going Down: A Review of Elevator Girl at Vanguard Arts Collective This world premiere from Vanguard Arts Collective suggests that the best tool for fighting sexual assault is...more sexual assault.
- Chicago’s Up and Coming: A Preview of Synapse Arts’ “New Works” at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Synapse's program provides essential resources, professional development and mentorship to unique artists at a crucial moment along their artistic path.
- Keeping it Simple: Lyric Opera Opens the Fall Arts Season in Your Living Room The Lyric Opera's season opener balances the gravitas of the moment with joy and celebration.
- Fairy Tale Reboot: A Preview of Amira, A Chicago Cinderella Story at the Logan Center for the Arts A romance that follows an immigrant girl and her suitor on a journey through Chicago neighborhoods.
