Cut-price operation

Cuttin' It

Image by Young Vic

The most shocking moment in Cuttin’ It is not the failure of 15-year-old Muna’s last-ditch attempt to stop the genital mutilation of her seven-year-old sister in a London tower block, though that’s heart-breakingly dramatic.

It’s the words of her rapidly found and rejected friend Iqra, the cutter’s assistant, that the cut girls – who get a cut price for group razoring – are now women.

 The idea that they are women only when a part of their body has been sliced off reveals a horrible, grotesque – and to those of us outside the group – mystifying misogyny.

As does her further justification that cutting makes girls “pure” and “clean” and will make their husbands’ happy.

Charlene James’ 70-minute two-hander, which has won an award and been broadcast on the BBC, tackles the subject head-on. Performed on a starkly bare set at the Young Vic, it stands or falls on the two girls’ delivery, occasionally conversational, mosstly in soliloquy. Adelayo Adedayo and Tsion Habte as the Somali-born friends and enemies (one a gobby, Jeremy Kyle-watching Brit, the other a traditional, orphaned newcomer),  certainly deliver.

The opening scenes, when they meet and become aware of each other, are disarmingly funny and touching. The mood rapidly darkens. You can see what’s coming but the writing is sharp enough to keep you glued and wondering how it will play out.

It’s a polemic, and there’s no doubt with whom our sympathies are intended to lie, but Habte is given a voice, a gentle, empathetic one. You just have to hope that she’ll change her views, though there’s little to suggest she will.

We who think excision doesn’t cut it needn’t change our views, but this play may push us closer towards speaking out and acting against it.

The number of girls and women living in Europe who have undergone FGM (“all procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”) is estimated at 500,000. The UN Children’s Fund puts the global number at over 200 million.

Post-show discussions:

+ 2 June, panel discussion

+ 7 June, Hekate Papadaki and Celia Jeffreys from Barnardos National FGM Centre, and FGM survivor Sarian Karim Kamara

* Cuttin’ It is at the Young Vic, 66 The Cut, SE1, until 11 June, £10/£20/£25. Info: 7922 2922/ http://www.youngvic.org/

+ Also, 23 June-13 July at the Royal Court, Sloane Square, SW1, Info: 7565 5000; 26-30 July, The Yard Theatre, Unit 2a Queen’s Yard, E9