CVNT @ Assembly George Square

Sophie Power's show – breaking down barriers around the body, pleasure and fear – is clown as exposure therapy

Review by Emma Sullivan | 22 Aug 2025
  • CVNT

The unloved, unruly, and uncharted cvnt has been receiving a fair bit of attention these last few years and Sophie Power's new show rides that wave to insist upon its significance. This is clown as exposure therapy – demanding we face the facts about women's genitalia while also staking a claim for a kind of cvnty power that might just be universal.

Power (as the cvnt) is a mesmerising presence – ablaze in fiery red tulle, she is seductive and rather menacing, on the prowl for pleasure. She wants us to find our pleasure, too, and she is thorough in trying to dismantle the fear and disgust that hold us back. Power is very deliberate, almost didactic, in compelling our attention, insisting we confront the cultural ick and break through to the freedom and power that lie beyond. There are some quite literal lessons, with an anatomical exercise that each and every volunteer fails. Maybe this is the way to do it, though; the pressure of public humiliation scorching that diagram into our collective minds.

The experience skirts group therapy: we are told to think of our enemies and gather our rage, to think of our fears, and summon our power. A man whose wife left him remembers hotly the man she left him for; a young woman who feels trammelled by anxiety has those anxieties enacted. For these volunteers, such moments seem genuinely cathartic. In the focus on clown as collective healing, there's some kinship with Julia Masli's show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, and Power builds a compelling case for the power of the cvnt underpinning it all.


CVNT, Assembly George Square (The Box), until 24 Aug, 9.15pm, £8-12