Blood Sweat and Vaginas
Written and performed by Paula David
Jack Studio Theatre
Star rating: 3.5
This is a brave, frank and intimate one woman play about rediscovering oneself in midlife.
Paula David’s character Carolann is depicted falling out of a 20 year marriage, feeling inadequate, marginalised and brain-fogged. Then there are three sexual encounters which gradually, with a lot of insight and humour, bring her to more confident mindset.
She is adept at stepping in and out of other characters with good voice switches as we meet her anxious daughter Tanya, the boorish, soon-to-be-divorced Simon and the people she gets close to. Sometimes she expresses her emotions by singing and David is a fine singer although the songs don’t add much to the narrative. Moreover, the recorded soundtrack is sometimes too loud.
The moods and mood switches are enhanced by Edward Tuke’s dramatic lighting which uses a lot of pulsing red to underpin interludes of spinning mental turmoil.
This quite thoughtful play about a subject which doesn’t get aired very much in theatre or anywhere else, includes one of the funniest sex scenes I’ve seen in ages. David (nicely directed by Olusola Oyeleye) has an entertaining way of embarking energetically on whatever it is while throwing hilariously incongruous asides at the audience.
The other very funny, and actually quite daring, moment is the huge vulva unmistakably constructed from red and silk satin with a pink ping pong ball secreted in its upper folds. We learned at the Q&A which followed without break (so we were captive) that she’s called Violet. Design by Phil Newman also included a hat stand with garments hanging from it and a box which stood for just about everything David needed to bring Carolann multi-dimensionally to life.
