“Just imagine we’re in some sort of sex well,” Helen Duff suggests, gesturing around the dungeon-like venue at the Vault Festival. Dancing around the stage in a bright blue mac in a sac and matching neon tights, she goes on to explain that she is dressed as a gigantic sperm. I’m fascinated, confused, maybe aroused and definitely a bit frightened. This is the power of Helen Duff.
Helen’s show Smasher is an hour-long quest to truly understand The Big O; a real, mind-blowing, Jesus-seeing, earth-shattering orgasm. Helen is on a mission to find it and capture it. She dissects the words employed to described orgasms, each represented in objects. The audience is enlisted as back up for this, equipped with water guns, a unicorn, and a packet of Hobnobs.
Helen endearingly tackles taboo subject matter, triumphantly vocalising thoughts and fears about sex that ring frighteningly true alongside my own. She reveals that she has conducted an online sex survey, exploring the answers to her questions about sex, and to some visible audience terror – infiltrating the audience and asking their own experiences, pouncing upon someone in the front row and asking them when the last time they had sex was, and then asking someone else what they enjoyed most about sex. One person responding with humour to deflect the question, the other refusing to answer completely. This was fascinating to watch, and proved to me that Helen’s show was not just hilarious, but also extremely necessary.
Helen has a secretive, omniscient charm about her, and builds up an excellent rapport with the audience. We are on her side from the start, and accept her slightly bonkers character as though she’s our zany, excited, over-sharing best friend, and we’ve been selected as her confidants.
Smasher, as does Helen’s quest for orgasms, ends all too soon. The show reaches its climax as she tries to reach hers; she asks those who have been given objects that represent orgasms to bombard her with them.
When this is done, we’re left reeling in the aftermath of an emotional bombardment, an explosion of truth and ridiculousness. was a tremendously brave production that felt as important as it was fulfilling, sad, bizarre and uproariously funny.
Helen is performing the last run of Smasher at the Brighton Fringe in May 2016. For tickets and more information click here!
