Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress – March 24, 2005

Laurie Elliott (left) and Kristeen von Hagen: the Dickwhipped duo

Whip it real good: Ballsy tales from the woman’s side

Dating and relationships can be hellish-hellishly funny if you live to laugh about it. Digging up scandalous tales from their own dating pasts, Toronto female comics Kristeen von Hagen and Laurie Elliott are getting ready to whip us real good in the nation’s capital. They’ll be bringing their Dickwhipped to Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club, March 31 to April 2.

Expect a gut-wrenching stroll down memory lane about desperate incidents and personal embarrassments that revolve around dating, dumping and all the stuff in between. Far from being a guy-bashing show, “it sort of goes from the angle of ‘guys are stupid and so are women,'” says von Hagen over the phone from Toronto. “We can blame guys, but look at what we’ve done.”

The hour-long comedy feature starts with stories of awkward pick-ups and weird people at bars through to the big relationship. Dickwhipped is about, as Elliott puts it, “the whole pursuit of happiness in a relationship.

“And once you’re in one,” Elliott adds, “women have been very, very dickwhipped and never made fun of for it.”

While men continue to be laughed at for being “pussywhipped,” or domesticated by their girlfriends, von Hagen and Elliott’s show turns the spotlight upon the sisters who are getting sucked in by the whole dating game too.

Von Hagen was already on her journey to being tamed by a boyfriend when friends dubbed her “dickwhipped.” The women appropriated the term and turned the phenomenon into a successful act.

For the show, they “look clean, talk dirty,” as von Hagen puts it. “We look so innocent and cute in our ’50s dresses,” von Hagen says, “and then we just lay it on the line.”

The two actresses hope to make everyone a little looser in the lips by showing it’s OK to be laughing about sex and relationships in public. “Up until this last while, women have not thrown their raw stories of dating and dumping and awkward moments in the bedroom out in the open,” von Hagen says. That becomes a main reason to keep the show moving forward to Dickwhipped Chronicles II sometime over the next year.

Dickwhipped received the Patron’s Pick award when it played to sold-out crowds in July at the 2004 Fringe Festival in Toronto. Von Hagen and Elliott took it to the Vancouver Comedy Festival in October 2004 and are keen to perform to an Ottawa crowd.

“Ottawa’s for comics. It’s one of the best cities to [perform in],” von Hagen says. She compliments the “smarter crowds” in Ottawa, who she hopes will shout out their embarrassing stories for a prize.

DICKWHIPPED
MARCH 31 TO APRIL 2
TICKETS: $6 TO $18
YUK YUK’S, 88 ALBERT STREET
WWW.DICKWHIPPED.COM

– Sylvie Hill