Crucible Theatre, Sheffield – July 17th 2025
Reviewed by Sharon Farley
4****
As well as having an enormously successful stage history, The Vagina Monologues has sparked a movement, a charity, and millions of conversations. The material contained within its episodic pieces spans a broad spectrum of experience and emotion, it is a true rollercoaster of a production that will take any audience from giggling to weeping, horrified to intrigued and back again. With that in mind, it was fascinating to see this now classic play performed with barely a word spoken by Deafinitely Theatre (Everyday, Grounded, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), featuring a cast of deaf and hearing women and non-binary people from all walks of life. Using British Sign Language and captions, the need for spoken dialogue is eliminated as these talented actors use a simple colour palette and a tremendous amount of attitude to convey everything required to bring these stories to life.
The stories themselves focus on the vagina both as an expression of self and as the terrain on which humanity is alternately celebrated and crushed. Many of the topics covered are hard viewing, but the cast handle them all with great sensitivity. They also incorporate hand gestures as a delicate mechanism for ‘passing the mic’ to great effect. Under the brilliant direction of Paula Garfield (Love’s Labours Lost, 4.48 Psychosis, Small World), the cast are perfectly synchronised and individual performances are well balanced. Each performer has their moment to shine, as well as working in practiced harmony with each other.
It is an incredibly dense production, so to reproduce it without the use of speech is a phenomenal achievement. Undoubtedly, V (formerly known as Eve Ensler) would be thrilled to see how her creation has been interpreted here. Watching the predominantly female audience pour out into the open air, one could sense the positive impact that sharing this celebration of female empowerment had reaped.