Review excerpts
The Vajayjay Monologues — 3.5 out of 5
By MICHELLE THOMPSON, Edmonton Sun on August 16, 2010
Forget the Vagina Monologues — the vajajay is where it's at, says Lindsay Burns.
"Vagina just isn't a word you can stand behind," Burns says in her hilarious one-woman play, the Vajayjay Monologues.
"It's too medical. Way too earnest."
But beneath her witty banter and clever one-liners, Burns asks a serious question: Is the vajayay a sign women are regressing?
While Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues helped sexually liberate women, Burns says the situation has gotten worse since the U.S. terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001.
Now, she says, most North American women are more concerned about Twilight and bedazzling their vaginas — ahem, vajajays — rather than appreciating their many freedoms.
First uttered in an episode of Grey's Anatomy, the word vajajay became famous after talk show titan Oprah Winfrey started using it on her show.
"I was worried about vaginas," Burns says. "Then Oprah called hers a vajayjay and before you knew it, we were f---ed."
In a series of monologues, a flippant Burns shares her vagina wisdom in a series of rants and raves meant to both entertain and inform.
Menstruation, celebrity obsession, and strange vagina trends — apparently some women are getting Swarovski crystals glued to their private bits — are among the topics explored in this satire.
While taking its mostly female audience on a hilarious ride, the Vajayjay Monologues poses some serious, legitimate questions about the direction women are heading.
Perhaps adding validity to Burns' concerns are contentious issues sprinkled liberally throughout the play.
Often hidden in humour, the controversial topics include surrogate motherhood and teen birth control use.
Burns contrasts those personal choices with the prohibitive lifestyles of third-world countries.
She questions whether too many women are squandering their freedoms.
Mostly, though, she mocks pop culture and critiques the vajayjays of celebrities who've exposed theirs to the word.
We're talking to you, Britney.
Laughs from the crowd are uncontainable throughout the play as Burns portrays a host of characters — ranging from an angry grandma to a vagina whisperer — in a series of monologues.
It's tough to say if the Vajayjay Monologues will change the world the way Ensler's play did.
But if nothing else, it should get a few people thinking.
Three and-a-half out of five.
Theatre Review: The Vajayjay Monologues
Posted by Avenue Staff in Culture Snacks on May 3 2010 13:08
By Lynda Sea
More than a decade ago, Eve Ensler, in one way or another, empowered women with her zeitgeist production The Vagina Monologues. With her satiric one-woman show, The Vajayjay Monologues, Calgary playwright-performer Lindsay Burns is back and getting women to rethink how much has changed since Ensler's groundbreaking show.
Burn's 75-minute tour-de-force is a show packed full of wit and pop culture references that explore the cutsefying of vagina to vajayjay in our modern lexicon. (We have Grey's Anatomy and Oprah to thank for that.)
The mixture of musical numbers and monologues from characters such as Margaret, a Jewish grandmother, an unnamed "plastic" Barbie-figure in hot pink patent pumps who is a cosmetic surgery disaster to a Scottish Vajayjay Whisperer and an East Indian woman, showcases Burn's impeccable wit and touches on the choices women have made in regard to their sexual identities.
Burns premiered this show back in 2007 with Urban Curvz but recent headlines and tabloid news have provided even more fodder for this latest installment. From young girls taking pills to stop menstruating to women electing for international adoption and vaginal cosmetic surgery, the topics are endless.
Her zingers and best material come in the form of answers she's culled from interviews - and by interviews, she mean Internet research. How can you tell you're a vajayjay? (If you think Charlie Sheen's a keeper, if you think you can find love on the Bachelor, if you know who Speidy and Snooki are.) Burns also touches on everyone from Sarah Palin, Anne Coulture, and how when Tiger Wood's car hit that tree, "a bunch of vajayjays fell out," to Bombshell McGee and Lindsay, Paris and Britney's "axis of partying evil."
It's deliciously funny, cleverly executed and her social commentary is sure to incite some reflection about what feminism is in a society where celebs proudly expose crotch shots for the paparazzi, women "vajazzle" their lady bits and choose vaginal cosmetic reconstructing and pay foreign surrogate mothers to carry their babies, simply because they can choose to.
Without giving any answers and avoiding over-handed directives , Burns nudges us to contemplate the call to action The Vagina Monologues set out in the first place and asks women, "How far have we really come?"
The Vajayjay Monologues
www.nytheatre.com Aug 2008
It's nice to be surprised by something truly new, and Lindsay Burns's original one-woman show, The Vajayjay Monologues, is most definitely an altogether new creature. Its title might make it seem like an obvious or simple comic takeoff of Eve Ensler's acclaimed The Vagina Monologues. Rest assured, it is not. Part parody, part sociopolitical statement, part homage, this play is the oddest and most outstanding balance of honest appreciation and legitimate questioning I've ever seen. While fans of The Vagina Monologues (and of Ensler's vital movement, V-Day) will get the most out of this show, Burns has carefully crafted a show that speaks to a wider audience, due to both its humor and its pathos.
The play is brilliantly funny and Burns's slightly over-the-top delivery is a marvelous send-up of Ensler's original performance. From the opening line, "I bet you're worried," I wasn't. Not the least bit. Burns is a wonderful performer and her stage presence is immediately apparent, somehow managing to be simultaneously commanding and inviting. Therein lies the brilliance of her writing as well. The show, a series of monologues with a couple songs, echoes and even answers Ensler's original work. Burns warns against the dangers of the "fake Bob" and the "coochie snorcher cherry popper." (Don't worry if that didn't make sense. She provides just enough exposition to include everyone in the jokes.) Her skewering of Ann Coulter as an "odious gasbag of spew" had me nearly falling out of my chair, while a revolt against cosmetic vaginal procedures had me wincing and howling at the same time. Her segment on the various slogans that vaginas might choose is absolutely priceless. Her scene recalling the onset of a schoolgirl's menstruation made my heart ache. Once again, the brilliance is in the balance. Every moving scene has a light note, and all of the humor is laced with meaning, but it's somehow never heavy-handed. Every moment, every character, every riotously funny observation about the current state of society, the Internet, politics, feminism, etc., has at its heart the clearest sincerity.
Vicki Stroich's direction is an excellent match for this unique work. Stroich clearly understands the piece and does a marvelous job with both the staging and the pace.
Burns makes the audience laugh out loud but also confronts them with some tough questions. How much progress has really been made, Burns asks, when Oprah (a one-time Vagina Monologues cast member) uses the euphemism "vajayjay" on national television, and we are under constant visual bombardment by the vaginas of Britney and Paris? She not only understands but has also managed to capture and humorously present a rather elusive truth: when we so canonize a person or movement that we can no longer stop and take an honest look at where we are, at the successes and failures of a particular effort, then we become static and wind up undermining the very empowerment that people like Eve Ensler have devoted so much time and energy trying to inspire in us. We cede the movement to history and consign true progress to the shelf while we pat ourselves on the back for walking around in circles. In this piece, Burns asks us how we can move forward. It is a question we must all work to answer if progress is to continue.
-Ross Chappell
4 Stars
Timeout Magazine August 2008
Mix one part comedy, one part musical and one part poignant look at post-9/11 female sexuality, and you'll get Lindsay Burns's engaging one-woman show. In this follow-up to Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Burns plays multiple characters and examines whether using cutesy terms like vajayjay, as even that feminist icon Oprah has done, detracts from the power that Ensler helped authorize for women's love muffins—I mean, our vaginas. At one point in her song about Anna Nicole Smith, sung to the tune of “Candle in the Wind,” I actually got a little teary-eyed. Overall, Burns does a great job of handling what we might certainly call a “hot-button” issue.—
-Leigh Wolinsky
Original Review
The Vajayjay Monologues
www.backstage.com Aug 2008
Lindsay Burns' The Vajayjay Monologues is a wonderfully dry riposte to Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. As directed by Vicki Stroich, it mocks Oprah Winfrey's use of the term vajayjay to great comic effect but also seriously questions why society still remains uneasy about women's genitalia.
Indeed, though Burns sarcastically wears her hair in Ensler's trademark pixie cut, she shares Ensler's goals for a kind of social enlightenment regarding the female anatomy. Sure, she'll use slang to get a laugh ("pink taco"), but she's not joking when she worries that the widespread cultural use of vajayjay may mean regression for women. Yet she also defends using the C-word, explaining that while feminists loathe it, it's very useful for describing Ann Coulter.
Burns' shares anecdotes, indulges in divine puns ("the cliterati"), offers a vajayjay etymology, and does several character-based monologues of her own. The two most poignant come at the beginning and the end: one in which a Jewish grandmother frets about sexual mores affecting her young granddaughter and one in which the granddaughter reveals how divided the generations really are.
-Leonard Jacobs
B+
The Vajayjay Monologues
Uptown Magazine July 2008
Ten years after the release of the wildly successful and now-iconic female-genital love-fest, The Vagina Monologues, Calgarian Lindsay Burns picks up where Eve Ensler left off. Taking aim at all things vaginal, this one-woman show explores everything from Britney Spears' paparazzi crotch shots to cosmetic labial-reconstruction surgery to period mishaps to the word 'cunt' and what it means to be called one in 2008. Burns clearly has highly developed observational skills and a wicked sense of humour, showcased particularly well when she deftly skewers youth Internet culture (she must have a daughter) but don't let the jokes fool you - there's equal amounts of tragedy and biting social commentary to be found here, too. A clever slice of feminism that balances approachability with attitude.
Review
The Vajayjay Monologues
winnipegonstage.comLeila Marston (primordialmuse@gmail.com)
I caught a late show of this one-woman production on a night I was barely awake enough to think, and I emerged from the theatre energized, thoughtful, and entertained.
For over an hour, Lindsay Burns sings, speaks, shouts, and solemnly elegizes; she's an insightful writer and a passionate performer. In exploring the lives of the paparazzi, the general fascination with pop culture, and the relationships of women to each other and to significant others, she weaves one thread strongly through all of her jests: that women should not judge their worth by others' standards. She's worried about vajayjays precisely because the cutesy "vajayjay" moniker is a sign of the times, a symptom of women relinquishing their true, deep strength and embracing a superficial, ineffectual "girl power."
Except for the last five minutes or so, which were addressed directly to the audience and which I felt should have been cut, Burns' show conveyed this extremely strong message without stating it outright. Her sometimes gentle, sometimes biting humour stands in for a direct delivery; you laugh at the joke, then contemplate exactly why you laughed, and begin to understand what she's trying to say.
This is a mature, skillful piece of theatre and should entertain both men and women, as well as challenging their ideas about womanhood in a changing world.
Preview
The Vajayjay Monologues
Winnipeg Free Press, 21 July 2008, by Alison Mayes
When Eve Ensler's 1996 play The Vagina Monologues had its original run in New York, some patrons who phoned for tickets couldn't bring themselves to say the title.
"It was considered racy," says actor-playwright Lindsay Burns. "Apparently there was some tough ticket seller who used to say (in response): 'If ya can't say it, ya can't buy it!'"
In spite of the hit play's celebration of female genitalia, says Burns in a phone interview, it seems that today we're back to squeamish or shameful avoidance of "vagina" in favour of the cutesy euphemism "vajayjay."
"Vajayjay" first came to prominence in 2006 on the medical TV show Grey's Anatomy, whose creators had to find an alternate term for "vagina" to placate network censors.
"Vajayjay" was embraced by Oprah Winfrey. Now it's everywhere, to the chagrin of many feminists who see it as a step backward toward infantilizing women's bodies.
"The interesting thing is that Oprah was one of the supporters of The Vagina Monologues," says the 44-year-old Burns, a well-established Calgary actor who is making her first Winnipeg Fringe appearance.
"In some ways, I understand the yearning for a term that is more 'chick lit' ... but are we choosing to regress as a gender?"
Burns has never performed in Ensler's show herself. But she pays homage to it with her one-woman show The Vajayjay Monologues at Venue 4 (Onstage at the Playhouse). The show, which had its initial run in Calgary last fall, is a mix of comedy and biting commentary, billed as "a sharp shot of feminist fun."
"I've definitely tried to make this show very funny, very satirical. You laugh, and then all of a sudden it's like you've been punched in the stomach."
How far have we progressed as a gender, Burns wonders, if starlets like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan feel the need to flash their "landing strips" for the world to ogle? It's disturbing, she says, that these young, commodified women feel driven to exhibit their final frontiers.
Burns, the mother of a six-year-old, also takes aim at women's increasing dissatisfaction with their private parts.
"Vaginal cosmetic surgery is one of the fastest growing segments (of cosmetic surgery) in the States. There are procedures called vaginal rejuvenation and designer vaginoplasty ... The image of what a vagina needs to look like is coming from porn. (Your vagina) needs to fit into the Barbie look."
Burns, whose last solo show was called Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart, is quick to poke fun at herself for living in the "godless suburbs" of Calgary.
She is thrilled to be taking The Vajayjay Monologues to the New York International Fringe Festival in August. It's been a decade, she notes, since Ensler launched the global V-Day movement, which has raised more than $50 million for women's anti-violence programs through performances of The Vagina Monologues around Valentine's Day.
"To take my version from the suburbs of the world into where The Vagina Monologues started, it's like a voice from the hinterland 10 years later going, 'Yeah, we got the message, and this is what we're bringing back.'"
Four Stars
The Vajayjay Monologues
Winnipeg Free Press, 18 July 2008, by Demetra Hajaidacos
If you take Lindsay Burns' word for it, women are in big trouble these days. According to the Calgary-based writer/performer, we can blame Eve Ensler, the creator of The Vagina Monologues, for that one. Ever since the hit off-Broadway production started a revolution 10 years ago, women seem more troubled by the state of their privates than they are about the state of their other very important organ ... their brain, that is.
And if you're expecting to get a crash course on feminism in this 90-minute one-woman show, think again. The word doesn't even come up in the string of exemplars and monologues that point to our more important priorities, like Paris Hilton's purse-sized pet or Nicole Richie's baby stroller. And let's not forget our fascination with everything Britney.
Funny and well-paced, this scathing commentary on the female race should make women very, very concerned about our state of affairs, in particular if we have young daughters with a collection of various shades of lipstick and have never heard the term "lipstick party."
...Burns is clearly speaking to the women in the audience who need to pull up their socks and re-evaluate how invested we all are in pop culture and where we're heading in a world that's capably dictated by the Church of Oprah.
Three Stars
The Vajayjay Monologues
CBC, 18 July 2008, by Kaj Hasselriis
It's already been a decade since The Vagina Monologues first got feminists shouting the c-word, and Lindsay Burns thinks it's time to study its impact on women. Noting that starlets like Britney Spears are showing off their "shorn pink tacos," she asks, "Are we choosing to regress as a gender?"
For 75 minutes, Burns performs the voices of fictional women who have been touched by Eve Ensler's culture-changing play. But by far the most entertaining voice in the show is Burns' own. She's best when cracking jokes about Brangelina's babies and making fun of the "axis of partying evil" (Hilton, Spears and Lohan, of course).
• • •
...there's no denying the show's popularity with a certain segment of the audience, especially the ones who followed Burns' orders to spread their legs and shout, "I am woman, I hear my roar."
If that sounds like your thing, go for it. As for me, I guess I'm just not that type of guy.
It's a gut-buster
The Vajayjay Monologues doesn't pull any punches — er, vaginas
FFWD September 27, 2007 by Kyle Francis
Labiaplasty. Rainbow parties. The ubiquitous vaginas of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. Paris Hilton. In a healthy, clear-thinking society, if even one person had any idea what any one of these meant, then someone, somewhere would probably lose their job. As it is, they're universally known. And Lindsay Burns is pissed.
Burns's excellent 2006 show, Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart, lampooned pop culture from a feminist perspective, and in that regard The Vajayjay Monologues takes a similar tack. Satirizing Eve Ensler's famous Vagina Monologues, Burns tears through a series of vignettes that run the emotional gamut from heartbreaking to gut-busting. Thankfully, neither her witty, cynical criticism nor her ability to entertain has diminished.
Vajayjay echoes The Vagina Monologues structurally — a solitary woman sits at the front of a darkened theatre upon a stool, giving monologues. Where The Vagina Monologues espoused feminine empowerment, though, Vajayjay shakes a stern finger. Each vignette tackles a different feminine issue that Burns believes has been negatively impacted by Ensler's play, or was simply overlooked by it. The result is a surprisingly cohesive, hilarious performance that strikes one resounding note: self-respect is requisite to empowerment.
• • •
Burns is at her best when she slowly builds to a darkly ironic punchline that hits so hard it leaves the audience shaken well into the next skit. In a brilliant piece that comments on pre-teen sex culture from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, Burns chronicles the protagonist's transformation from a sweet, ordinary kid into someone who blows older boys in a mall bathroom while being filmed with a cellphone camera. As the last line strikes, it's clear that she's lost none of her innocent perspective, that instead she's been victimized by a culture obsessed with sex and glamour. And it's funny. It's horrible, infuriating and sickening, but it's no less hilarious than any other piece in the show — even if it is in a way that makes you feel bad for laughing.
Happily, Vajayjay delivers more often than it plods. Burns has proven, once again, that she has the talent and charisma to hold a stage by herself for an hour-and-a-half, and the intelligence to craft a message that ensures her audience's rapt attention isn't wasted. Vajayjay Monologues examining how far we've come, or not
By Bobbi Goddard, The Reflector, September 28th 2007
"And it seems to me, you lived your life like a car crash we all spied," croons Lindsay Burns in her latest one woman show, The Vajajay Monologues. To the tune of "Candle in the Wind," she belts an ode to Anna Nicole Smith, just one of the musical numbers and one of countless pop culture references in this unrelenting, and unabashed, eighty minute show. Burns' latest creation, which owes its name to day-time deity Oprah Winfrey, is a response-to and roast-on Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.
Since 2000, Ensler's off-broadway hit has garnered international success and given way to a world-wide movement—a charity phenomenon that unites feminists across the globe. But have we really come that far? This is the essential question hidden in Burns' comedic diatribe littered with celebrity name-drops. Yes, Eve Ensler has given us a "context of vaginas," and given feminists a flag to wave, but have things really changed?
Burns aims to create a new context, one of the "vajayjay" variety, and she does so with satire. Director Vicki Stroich puts it best in her program notes: "The satirist takes a risk...and because issues in the present are volatile and unvarnished by years of history, the satirist is bound to set off a few explosions and rub someone the wrong way."
This is certainly true of Burns' newest creation as she raises questions about everything from foreign adoption, to lesbianism as a junior high ploy for popularity.
• • •
And as a writer, Burns pulls off some pretty amazing stuff. The Vajayjay Monologues is more than just a clever name. It is a fine example of how she uses language to prove her point and move deftly between heavy subject matter and full-on uproarious-ness. Her command of language allows her to mock and amuse audiences at the same time; praise and punish Ensler all in one blow. And amid the giggles she addresses some relevant and serious issues that are, in my humble opinion, large gaps in the Ensler canon.
The Vagina Monologues is based on interviews with women across the globe. The Vajayjay Monologues, seems to me, is proudly based on what Lindsay Burns thinks about the world. A little too much popular culture for my liking, but maybe that's the point she is trying to make. In this contemporary world, things are out of hand to the point of hilarious and Burns is making sure we don't ignore it. I am inclined to agree that when a woman with millions of viewers starts referring to her vagina as a "vajayjay," it is time for someone new to speak up.