Just when you though it might be safe to go back to the theatre without the risk of encountering a speaking vagina, up pops this Vagina Monologues clone.
Imagine Anne of Green Gables talking dirty and you have something of the flavour of this evening, which consists of grunts, groans and schoolgirl giggles and a series of brief monologues with titles such as Cock in Your Mouth, Whack Me Off and Lap Dance. There is nothing in the slightest bit moist about this evening: it is like being dry-humped for 90 long, tedious minutes.
Apparently, in the US the Erotica Project has been hailed as empowering for women, but we are talking about a country that suffers national trauma when it gets a fleeting glimpse of Janet Jackson's right breast. It is only men who might think that the Erotica Project is a good thing, as it promotes an image of women walking around in a state of heightened arousal, just waiting for a man to stick his penis in one of our orifices.
For a show that purports to be about women's sexuality, Lillian Ann Slugocki and Erin Cressida Wilson's monologues are extraordinarily phallocentric, and almost entirely heterosexual. By the end of the evening I felt quite battered and bruised by all those thrusting cocks, and depressed by the show's inability to make distinctions between sex and desire.
If I didn't know otherwise, I would have guessed that The Erotica Project was some kind of male fantasy. Steve Dykes' coy production, with its parade of lithe young women in Ann Summers' finest, certainly is. It might have a tad more credibility if it included anyone over the age of 23 or someone with saggy tits, tired eyes and three kids to get to school in the morning. I'd offer, but I've got a headache.
· Until February 6. Box office: 020-8858 9256.
