How do we talk about the . . . er . . . you know . . . um . . . ?

If your vagina could talk, what would it say? More importantly, do we really want to know? The major theme of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," performed Feb. 20 by the group Wym'onStage, is exposure. Characters talk about their vaginas to raise women (and men) into heightened consciousness, as part of a nationwide initiative known as V-Day.

The concept of encouraging women to accept their bodies is noble, but whether it is necessary to delve into graphic, physical description and intimate discourse about intercourse to achieve change is another question; one not easily answered with a glib metaphor.

The subjects of the monologues range from a 72-year-old woman who has never seen her vagina to a six-year old girl who thinks her vagina smells like snowflakes. Most of the scenes involve a narrator, played by rotating women, who introduces the monologues and serves as a buffer to the bluntness of the material. While many times this was a helpful aid, it was also irritating in that it spelled out the objectives of the play, in case the audience didn't experience the intended personal revelations.

One example is the scene, "Entering Vaginas," in which a lesbian graphically describes her methods for giving other women pleasure. The narrator, who represents the author, Eve Ensler, looked at the audience desperately as the woman talked about cavities and wetness, shrugging her shoulders and wondering aloud "Am I talking about vaginas to arouse people? Is that a bad thing?" She summed up the entire play in the confessional line, "I realize I don't know what is appropriate."

By most people's standards, neither did the directors of the Princeton production. In many of the monologues, little was left to the imagination. Actresses rubbed and scratched at themselves, and at one point, an actress lay on a shiny blue mat and angled a hand mirror between her parted legs. For those of us in the upper right balcony, her knee-length skirt hardly censored her desperate search. Actresses also inserted orgasms at random moments throughout the script, gasping and escalating their voices while delivering ordinary lines.

Some moments were brilliant. Not a single instant lagged during Laura Coates' gutsy rendition of "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy."

"My Angry Vagina," performed by Dasheeda Dawson and Elizabeth Adger, won enthusiastic cheers from the audience and captured a lot of the agony involved in being a woman.

But like an arthritic octogenarian masturbating, these climaxes were a long time coming. Several monologues were so slow and painfully embarrassing that the only audible response was the squeak of the audience squirming in their chairs. A few women behind me fell victim to that high-pitched, can't hold-it-in, snorting, shaking hysterical laughter that springs from pure discomfort. They didn't even regain control during the sobering "Vagina Facts" about genital mutilation in Africa, or the moving "My Vagina Was My Village" monologue about a Bosnian rape victim.

In the row in front of me, two married couples provided their own hilarious sideshow: one husband belted out a few ill-timed chuckles, as the second man, equally confounded by the tampon and gynecologist jokes, followed his cue, until the first was remonstrated by his hand-wringing wife. The other wife sat rigidly in her chair.

On the one hand, such discomfort can be a positive thing. Sometimes it makes us aware of our insecurities and prejudices and encourages us to change. This was surely Ensler's objective, as she explained many times, in many ways. But is connection with a physical entity, like a vagina, equivalent to connection with the self? And is talking about it like this advancing the idea of feminism, or is it perpetuating the in-your-face, femi-nazi, hysterical image of women that discourages and disgusts men and women alike? Most importantly, is it necessary to include physical reenactments and excessive description of intimate acts to make a point?

At one point, the Ensler character explains how she added a monologue about birth to the regular lineup, because she felt that ignoring it would be a "bizarre omission." But to me, the most bizarre omission was any reference to pleasurable heterosexual sex. The one monologue about male-female sex that wasn't about rape was prefaced by a snide remark: "Here's a monologue about a woman who actually had a good experience with a man." And while several monologues negatively focus on men as rapists and child molesters, when a 24-year-old woman seduces a 13-year-old girl it is not only acceptable, but applauded.

By its very nature, a show like "The Vagina Monologues" will create a buzz no matter how it is performed. For all that we don't say about the vagina, there are plenty of ingrained associations to it, and the play attempts to tackle all of these at once. With such subject variation as abuse, lesbianism and birth, the emphasis could be placed anywhere. The Wym'onStage production tried many angles to get a rise out of the audience but left us talking about the lesbian sex worker scene and the seductive "Cunt" monologue, not the vagina facts or Bosnian rape victims. As a result, the mission of V-Day, to end violence, was lost between gasping lines.