Rosie Wilby: Further Science of Sex

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Rosie Wilby made her Fringe debut last year with The Science of Sex, by most accounts a slightly limp affair that took as its subject matter the intersection between the messy, emotional terrain of love and lovemaking, and the cold, hard world of science. This year, she’s clearly reckoned that she’s got more to say on the subject, and perhaps that she can say it better. On the evidence of this performance, she thought wrong.

There are some nice ideas here, and a fair handful of decent one-liners. It’s a bit of a jumble of genuine, interesting science and hackneyed modern myths, but at best Wilby can turn this jumble into some gently amusing visual images, like two graphs comparing the patterns of male and female arousal towards orgasm (the female graph is simply much, much longer).

The problem is that Wilby rattles through her material at such a breakneck speed that she doesn’t allow any of it to obtain its full potential. The prim, labcoated persona she’s adopted is the thinnest of veils for her real personality, but at the same time she’s unwilling to give us much of a clue as to who she is or what bearing any of this has to her own love life. One can’t help wondering whether she’s settling too willingly into the groove set for female comedians, who are generally trusted to talk about love and relationships, but little else. With fresher ideas and some work on delivery, Wilby could be pretty funny. As it is, her show lacks both chemistry and spark.