THE MISS VAGINA PAGEANT
at Urbus Orbis
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It helps that the Soloways offer a distinctly feminist sensibility that shows itself in the way Miss Vagina never stoops to mocking the women involved in the pageant. The five contestants are presented as neither bimbos nor semidivines but as individuals. Thus Beth Cahill gets laughs because her character, Denise Wittke, is such a perfect re-creation of a tough white girl from the southwest side. The most attractive contestants are those who seem truest to themselves. The two most conventionally glamorous women–Camille Roget (Susan Messing) and last year’s Miss America, Carol Ann Baker (Madeline Long)–are foolish, dishonest, essentially lost souls.
Elliot Gage must shoulder the responsibility for the way this production fails to coherently relate Mann Ist Mann’s very simple story, about a schlemiel named Galy Gay who stands in for an AWOL soldier and slowly takes on his identity. Gage’s rendition decays into a series of pointless, seemingly unrelated scenes. The play would have seemed wholly incomprehensible to me–as it did to my companions–had I not known the story beforehand.
