In the Body of the World

Written and performed by Eve Ensler

Directed by Diane Paulus

Performances through March 25, 2018

Eve Ensler’s talent for witty and thought-provoking solo shows (notably The Vagina Monologues and The Good Body) continues with her latest, In the Body of the World, which may even be her most intimate and personal work yet.

After describing the steadfast determination of women (horribly scarred physically and psychologically) whom she met while visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ensler then admits that something came along to knock her down: cancer. She initially reacted as many do when something bad happens: she blamed herself, even going so far as to ask whether, instead of having a baby, she ended up growing a tumor instead?

Despite the bleak prognosis, Ensler keeps her sense of humor as she describes what she went through—chemo, pain, hope, despair, even a visit from her alternatingly enervating and helpful sister—as she kept tabs on the African women creating a City of Joy for those who’ve been abused. Her humor is laced with heartbreak: she movingly reenacts her final moments with her dying mother, a woman with whom she wasn’t close but who responded to Eve’s overtures at the end.

There’s a lot to digest in In the Body of the World, some of it uncomfortably stark, but Ensler has always bravely blended the personal and the universal (and the political and cultural and…). Diane Paulus directs sympathetically on Myung Hee Cho’s wonderfully evocative set—which morphs into an astonishing garden that Ensler invites the audience onstage to explore after the play ends—visualizing the beauty in our world, explored by Ensler as potently as anything she’s done.

In the Body of the World

Manhattan Theater Club, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY

manhattantheaterclub.org