German premier

»The Vagina Monologues« by Eve Ensler – lapped up, played everywhere and oh, perhaps not so risqué and cheeky anymore after all? Correct – but this is something completely different: four men not only speak, but also play »The Vagina Monologues«, which were originally written by a woman, for women. Thrilling, powerful and funny, so much that you can at last start to really enjoy theatre again.

But yet in all the fun, the sex change also gives the text a kind of background and distance often suppressed by the directness and obviousness of the original. American Eve Ensler, born in 1953, made a hit with »The Vagina Monologues« – based on interviews with the author – which premièred in New York in 1996 and was later played by a cast of stars including Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder.

The text, now under the title »Katytė ›P‹« (»Pussycat ›P‹«), has been staged in pop art style by Vytautas Balsys, born in 1956 in Kaunas. The four actors are among the best in the country, playing parts at the Kaunas state theatre as well as in television and film. Vytautas Balsys studied German and production in Vilnius, has produced numerous pieces at the Kaunas theatre and has shot films for both cinema and television. In 1990 he became assistant to Jürgen Flimm and Robert Wilsson at the Thalia theatre in Hamburg. However, he was unable to get on with the west and he returned home, where he founded Kauno Mažasis Teatras (The little Kaunas theatre) in 1992, as an alternative, experimental theatre. It is the smallest theatre in the city, on the top floor of an old building in the centre of the old town.

»Some spectators find the play rubbish, others say it is a masterpiece. Differences of opinion are OK. director Vytautas Balsys confirms this: ›I do not want to give an outrageous impression. It is more of a story of my childhood, of women who spoke of their most intimate adventures with us and thought we would never understand‹« (Albertas Kronšteinas, Kulka, Kultur in Kaunas, 03/2004).