After centuries under an objectifying male gaze, women more than most struggle to emerge from under the weight of expectation that people have of them in order to live on their own terms.
Divorce and perimenopause take Carolann in a pincer movement that triggers a reappraisal of her life that is both private and epic, rejecting the strong black woman archetype that has long subordinated her true self.
With touching candour, Carolann stretches out an invisible hand of support to women who have shared the embarrassment of hot flush-induced sweat stains, the confusion of brain fog and seesawing hormones that swing from depression to fizzing vagina in the time it takes to spray the deodorant.
There is comedy here too and an uplifting tenor to Carolann’s efforts that rings bells of hope. Being open to new experiences is down to mental self-liberation, and impromptu sex with a Mr Look So Good is not held back by having stretch marks or being seen in granny knickers.
Writer, actor and songwriter Paula David has created a fluidly episodic hour of narrative interspersed with sung phrases. She is strongest as Carolann, her strong soulful voice underscoring the emotion of the text, making the peripheral characters dispensable.
Carolann is loosely based on David’s own time of perimenopause, and the honesty and forthrightness with which she approaches this life change is refreshing and much needed.
However, Blood, Sweat and Vaginas is much more than a play about a woman navigating a physiological milestone; with no pretence that the journey is going to be easy, Carolann is a herald that calls to black women to embrace their vulnerability and disown others’ inherited view of them as “uniquely indestructible”.
At the start, Carolann says, “I want to remember who I am”. By the end, she has uncovered a reimagined, self-accepting Carolann who understands her new self as work in progress, not made in the image of others, raising her from invisible older woman to a practical heroine for our times.