Salvador Kent
Make no mistake about it. WWVW productions are an outfit with a unique currency of ideas and lots of potential, and despite Jilly: Requiem for a Silly Billy not quite finding its feet at this festival, another production from the outfit might do.
This one starts strongly, Georgia Dunn holding Gray Imrie in a suitably Michelangelo-ish pose, austere choral music blasting. The show is primarily a live lecture on whether Jilly Cooper deserves to go to the good girl’s club (in an afterlife run by Judy Garland, naturally). It is a charming collection of forms and ideas, and they do all sit alongside each other nicely. You have this high theatrical image at the start, the lecture, a hilarious bit of audience interaction where an unsuspecting person has to wish that Rupert Campbell-Black might ‘spank [them] with a riding crop’. This is all imaginative and filled with potential.
What is lacking is a confidence from the performers. Stickers which allow you to consent to audience interaction at the start of the show are a great idea in principle, but part of the fabric of an alternative comedy show like this is the uncomfortable idea you might get picked on. It is implied the performer will know how to deal with a crowd, and if we are given as much agency as we are, in a paradoxical way we become critical. Dane Sawdust and Bella F. Ashley are characters with a nice visual to them, but there’s not enough distinction between them, nor is the reason they deliver the lecture together sufficiently explained.
Dunn has a deep and nuanced understanding of Rivals, and applies a feminist lens onto the problematic relationship between Taggie O’Hara and Rupert Campbell Black. It’s less successful in trying to vindicate Jilly Cooper’s representation of queer people in the midst of the AIDs crisis. The fact she did that is a brute fact, but why that’s laudable in any way is not addressed. Perhaps the key issue is we’re never really sure whether Rivals is worth saving or re-evaluating through this. You can’t really call it great literature but it might have some personal story or generational impact that might better be explored here.
I hope WWVW productions keep it high concept and playful. This was nicely designed and had some fun moments, but for me the material was niche and aloof, despite its commendable potential.
Recommended Drink: I enjoyed this with a Dundee Fringe staple, the ‘mega-pint’. It’s just a pint of Heineken.
Performances of Jilly: Requiem for a Silly Billy have concluded at Dundee Fringe 2026.
Ellen Leslie
Lamesha Ruddock
