THE real star of last night's Vagina Monologues was not on the stage. I'm sure Jenny Éclair, Jennifer Ellison and Wendi Peters would join me in taking their hats off to the single man in the audience.

This brave soul in the second row was singled out by Ellison (Brookside) during a monologue about reclaiming the c-word.

After being urged to shout it out, he deserved his round of applause.

It was just one of many hilarious moments in a show which has been pulverising taboos since it was first premiered by writer Eve Ensler in a tiny theatre in New York in 1996.

In this version, Éclair (Grumpy Old Women) had a down-to-earth wit. Yet her monologues felt rushed and it was only when ad-libbing that her talent really shone – including once during a sketch about orgasms in which she made Ellison curl up in embarrassment by referring to noises from her hotel room.

Peters (Coronation Street's Cilla Battersby Brown) delivered her monologues in an upper-crust persona.

Ellison packed the emotional punch of the night when she slipped into a Bosnian accent to become a survivor of a rape camp, leaving an audience which minutes previously had been howling with laughter and gleefully shouting obscenities stunned into silence.

The show's emotional highs and lows were in place – it's a shame this production couldn't have taken its time and let us savour them.

Emily Rawlins