Everyone, whether in possession of a pussy or not, should see Pussy at The Royale Theatre straight away. All I knew about the show before I entered the theatre through a giant felt vulva was it was a cabaret, so I expected variety, and boy (I mean, girrrl), did I get it!

The team from The Hairy Godmothers are five cis-gendered women – that’s five pussies on stage – in hot pink swimming costumes and various top hats, tails, and heels. Their talents range from comedy skits, musical numbers, and hip-hop dance to spoken word poetry and lecturing on the relevance of pussies to quantum physics. Quite the variety!

The show started in the tone I expected, raucously funny and bitingly satirical. The pap smear skit had me in stitches and the image of a wine bottle opener standing in for an IUD (intra-uterine device) is, horrifyingly, forever seared on my mind. Singing and dancing to appropriately pussy-related pop songs is not enough for these talented ladies, who also write and perform their own musical numbers. I learnt more about the clitoris from their three-minute song than from twelve years of schooling.

The comedy of Pussy is not subtle, and neither is the laughter it provokes, but, as they said, what’s the point of a pussy show if not to get a little bit deep? While maintaining a sense of humour and penchant for puns the show took a turn for the serious, the contemplative, and the downright emotional.

The show’s deep dive into our shared experiences and in particular our gratitude for our mothers was pulled off with dignity, poignancy, and a few tears. They tackled the usual dismissal of this kind of of brash, sex-positive feminism as ‘white feminism’ head on by acknowledging their privileges and limitations in very personal poems about their own experiences as pussy-owners. All five women bared themselves both physically and emotionally on stage, and I am sure everyone else in the audience shared my appreciation for their candour. I know I went away with a lot of food for thought, and for recurring giggles (I’m not going to forget the MC ‘Mingelicious Clam’ for a while!). I cannot wait to see what they come up with next.