“Vaginal Discharge” by Florence Bell
Nottingham New Theatre

Often the title of a new play gives a bit of an incite into what the play is about; erm… well…OK, it's all about women's issues. Things that us blokes know of but really know nothing about.... basically because we're not women!

Flippant I know but, like the male character, King,the only male character in this play shows, we blokes are pretty ignorant about what happens to a woman's body, and what they endure.

The four, all female cast set out to educate the male majority audience tonight, and I found myself being educated in an entertaining way, not unlike Eve Ensler's ground breaking "Vagina Monologues". You really do leave the theatre a little wiser than when you went in.

We start out watching a follow up to a TV interview about wash powder where Catherine actually said the "V - D" word on prime time TV. From then on we go through several scenes with Catherine and her family including their two daughters, one just starting her periods, highlighting the censorship issues in and out of the home.

Laura Wolczyk (King), Eleanor Rickenbach (Catherine), Rosiella Sutherland (Martha) and Beth Summerfield (Asha) presented and educational and entertaining piece of theatre that could only have been written by a woman and performed by women.

The vivid descriptions of the consistency on the blood flow is something that maybe men shouldn't be privy to, mainly because we're a squeamish lot when it comes to stuff like this. We're OK watching gory films where limbs are ripped off and zombies eat brains from the skull but describe a perfectly "natural" female body function as these women did - and i can only speak for myself here - I was feeling just a little in need of air and smelling salts!

If anything, this play explains what a woman goes through and her feelings about what happens to her, and her body during this time, and while we men like to think we understand, I don't think we really appreciate the affects, so thanks for entertaining and more importantly, educating this bloke

Florence Bell is the writer and Director, assisted by Skylar Turnbull Hurd, and the piece was produced by Francis Simmons

Darcey Graham is the Lighting Director with the Sound Design by Miguel Barrulas.

“ Vaginal Discharge” is at the Nottingham New Theatre until Tuesday 15 May 2018. Don't be bloody minded and go with the flow and get yourself educated as well as entertained.