The English language has many ways to describe such men. We have douchebag, jerk, asshole, tool, tosser… But perhaps none captures the nuance of toxic, arrogant, thick-headed masculinity quite as succinctly as the one that gives this show its title. The term literally refers to the tip of the penis, but in a figurative sense it means the kind of toxic male that we all know. And that is what inspired this debut piece by Mathilde Invernon: the breakout performance at this year’s Santarcangelo Festival, and one that you simply cannot afford to miss.

On stage, Arianna Camilli and Mathilde throw themselves into the equally comic and violent act of scrutinising and embodying the figure of the bell end, through a meticulous analysis of his micro-gestures and micro-expressions. There’s nothing beneath the shell: neither name, age nor social class. What Arianna and Mathilde are telling us is that what exactly defines these individuals, and why they are allowed to exist at all, is a micro-collection of ways of taking up space and looking at the opposite sex. In Bell End, the two women reverse the gaze to which they are so often subjected, turning it back on the one who is gawking at them.

The result hovers somewhere between a very slow stab (a stare can wound in a split second, but Bell End lasts 45 minutes) and a clownish double act. As they themselves put it, what they reconstruct is a choreographic ABC of micro-gestures and micro-utterances unique to the bell end: a lexicon that goes far beyond individual expression and is exposed as a tacit, secret language tasked with upholding and perpetuating structures of power and submission, whether in the family, the workplace, or politics.

The body becomes both a vehicle and support in a transformative act that explores gender and power relations, just as we also see in Symphony of Horror by Sara Manubens, and Mamarratxa Attack by Julia Irango.