[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Theatre West‘s My Uterus: A Womb with a View, written and performed by Dina Morrone.
Dina Morrone is a force unto herself and lucky for us she has created yet another brilliant solo play, My Uterus: A Womb with a View. It sounds like a comedy…and it is. But it also touches on some very important and beautifully described epic issues with womanhood, pregnancy and the obvious fact that without wombs there would be no one…literally.
With her usual aplomb, Dina takes us on a very personal journey of hers. This one revolves around the center of the universe…our reproductive bits and pieces. Dina has had her fair share of uterine issues and as she shares her stories she makes us laugh…she’s very very good at that. But in amongst all the humor is a real heartache and deeply personal and purposefully shared lessons on love, loss and trying again.
Dina is a born storyteller, unafraid to face the truth and driven to share it. These stories are important. We must talk about miscarriage, the ache of loss and the need for blame to be assigned, especially by ourselves and to ourselves. It’s also imperative that the veil is lifted from all this reproduction so that there can be more understanding and perhaps more autonomy. We are losing the thread of individual rights over our own bodies and unless we frankly and boldly take back the truth and share it over and over again, we may lose everything so many brave women fought so long to gain.
Dina’s stories and wonderfully performed lessons of the heart and body are truly excellent examples of using our voices to strengthen our world. Women do in fact hold up more than half the sky, so we had better speak out and make sure to be heard. But we can also, with the help of brilliant artists like Dina Morrone, entertain as we remind everyone how we all came to be. After all, each of us, man or woman and everything in between, came from the womb.
Dina has an incredible way of embodying her characterizations. She’s wickedly funny and piercingly accurate reenactments of some pivotal moments in her life were wonderfully done. It took me back, as many other women in the audience, to similar experiences in my life, good, bad, amusing and unforgettable. These experiences helped make us and framed our collective world. Being female in a male-centric society is a strange, strange journey and one worth sharing if only to remind us all just how ridiculous that is.
But, setting all that aside, it all makes for an excellent, memorable and absolutely hysterical, if you’ll excuse the classical pun, show. Dina performed it in honor of Women’s History Month, but I do hope she performs it again soon. I rather think that women’s history should be celebrated every single day anyway! There was a very, very packed house at Theatre West and the audience was truly rolling in the aisles at this wonderful meaningful show by the extraordinarily talented Dina Morrone. Bravo!!!