Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers

Vagina. There, I said it! In fact, we all said it, repeatedly, after The Vagina Monologues on Monday evening. We talked of little else, those of us who had one, while those who didn't were variously bemused, amused or determinedly unfazed. The smell of sick as we entered the auditorium was not due to the upchucking of some nervous audience member, as originally supposed, but to the new blue lighting gels. One of the usherettes, the delightful Nicola, danced through the theatre spraying air freshener in a manner befitting a Performing Arts student. With our olfactory equilibrium restored, we enjoyed the show in spite of Paul Holloway's unintentional contributions from the control box - rumour has it he hasn't stopped talking since the launch on Thursday evening!

Incidentally, if you have been in the audience for John Godber plays at Hull Truck, you will have no doubt been struck by the insatiable appetite of Godber's audiences for naughty words. Mention a 'chuffing' or a 'bugger' and they're rocking in the aisles. The Godber effect was in evidence during the introductory sequence of Vagina Monologues, when the voiceover gives a long list of alternative names for the subject of the title. The range of guffaws, giggles, whoops, gasps and other noises which greeted this descriptive cascade was matched only by the extraordinary variety of moans of sexual ecstasy so deftly illustrated during the performance. The perfect recipe for a solid two hours of uproarious entertainment would clearly be the recitation of all the rude and naughty words you could possibly think of. ( This is pretty much the message of the song Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers, by Flanders and Swann, which features in 'The Gasman Cometh' at Wyke College on Wednesday and Thursday.)

Afterwards, interested in audience reaction we interviewed Kevin, one of the duty St. John's Ambulance personnel, for his views. He explained that although they were used to bodily parts, given the nature of their job, this was an unusual one for them. Indeed, much of the first half had been spent leafing through their instruction manuals under V. He had found the show interesting but reckoned that on balance The Sound of Music at the New last week was more his cup of tea. Encouraged by the success of this research I now repaired to the box office while Jackie queued patiently for our G&T;'s ( note to Spring Street - get more bar staff! ). There a very helpful young woman printed out for me a Geographical Analysis of Ticket Sales by Sector. Wow! The visit yield for HU11 was 12 and the value of DN18 was 1.09% .Not that I was able to extract a lot of significance from all this, never having been what you would call a numbers person, but you have to admit this was a pretty impressive bit of data. When I also mention that Kunti was an Indian goddess of fertility who gave her name to the c word articulated so beautifully by Gill Holtby during the show, there can surely be no further aspersions cast on the intellectual rigour of your two diarists.