Dil and Do

Dil (Nicola Rosbo-Davies) is some sort of young, smiling blonde Sexpo huckster, blandly demonstrating sex toys which will help women better enjoy life and enhance their ‘relaxation’.  She uses puppets representing male genitalia, female pudenda, little joke penis statues and finally a bigger than life size vibrating dildo. 

She is in the midst of this when, for no discernible reason, she is joined – or interrupted – by Do (Dominique Croset).  Do has a mass of frizzy red curls piled on her head and carries an intriguing red box.  Throughout the show she appears to be both voluble and bewildered.  She is a Frenchwoman for the reason that apparently Ms Croset actually is French – and, I guess, ‘French’ suggests a dated idea of ‘sexy’.  Here, she is a visitor, so to speak, from the quaint past when sex aids were unnecessary, or thought to be so.  The joke is that neither woman understands the other.  Eventually – after rather too long - Do opens the red suitcase, revealing rather uninteresting, merely functional lingerie; she is, maybe, a representative of a lingerie firm. 

The concept per se, you might think, has some potential, but there are unfortunate aspects to its realisation, so much so that you wonder at the point of the exercise.  To begin with, the two women are behind a large black box, which provides the stage for the puppets.  Such are the sight lines that a good half of the audience cannot see the puppets or the cute little penis statues.  (I think some of the statues might be vagina statues, but they are very small, and I couldn’t really see.)  The puppets of male genitalia – and, later, a voracious vagina dentata – are a bit amateur sock puppet affairs and achieve only momentary erection by flipping the floppy bit.  As for the pudenda, the design inhibits insertion, so… 

About halfway through, the comparisons of past and present appear to run out and the two women stage a sort of send-up of a sexualised version of the movie Top Gun - using the little statues, which of course we cannot see, and that vagina dentata as a sort of climax.  Again, some sort of concept or argument, might be dimly glimpsed, but since we cannot see the statues or the puppets and neither performer can speak clearly, it all gets a bit muddled. 

Ms Croset holds a certain frenetic interest for us.  Ms Rosbo-Davies does not.  It is not often that one sees, before a paying audience, a performer with so little talent.

Beside me at the show, The Companion, a generous soul, laughed occasionally – to help.  I hope that did not encourage these two women.  I have seen many shows at the Butterfly Club.  Many and varied they have been, but Dil and Do is undoubtedly the worst.

Michael Brindley