I’M BAFFLED that a play I have now seen half a dozen or so times still has the ability to make me laugh out loud and cry buckets in one sitting.

But that’s the beauty of Eve Ensler’s theatrical phenomenon Vagina Monologues, which brings to life a series of tales from real women, some of them hilarious, some of them heart-breaking.

You certainly wouldn’t expect the amusing tale of a pensioner having her first orgasm to sit happily alongside a harrowing story of rape in Bosnia, but somehow it works.

As usual, the ladies succeeded in their quest to get hundreds of genteel theatre-goers, 99 per cent female, screaming obscenities at the stage.

There’s no music, no plot and the staging is incredibly simple, but the monologues say it all.

It’s just four women dressed in black, sitting on four stools, in front of four microphones talking vaginas for more than two hours.

In Southampton this week, our vagina spokeswomen are ex- EastEnders Anita Dobson and Louisa Lytton, another former soap star, Coronation Street’s Zaraah Abrahams, and South Today presenter Sally Taylor.

The star of the bunch was Dobson, with a set of really splendid characterisations, but all four women impressed with Taylor not showing a hint of the nerves she admitted to suffering before her stage debut.

With last night’s opener proving a riot, I can only imagine the atmosphere will get even more raucous as the week progresses.

If you’re looking for a girls’ night out, this is perfect. But if you don’t have a vagina, or you don’t like talking about yours, this could be a terrifying theatrical experience.

■ Vagina Monologues runs until Saturday at The Mayflower. Box office: 023 8071 1811