Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Jessie Cave’s occasional shows provide an effective simulation of what you imagine it must be like in her mind. A Childlike use of multimedia including doodles, puppetry and music creates a swirling, disorienting fog. 

In this fog, there are only three topics, and we arrive at them again and again: her babies, her turbulent relationship with Alfie Brown, and the tragic early death of her brother.

She says she wanted her new show to be ‘hardcore straight stand-up’ but she’s dwarfed on the stage by a handmade dinosaur-themed shadow puppet theatre. In this, as in all things, she’s a slave to her nature.

Having had two more babies since her last show, she draws a connection between her brother’s death and what she describes as a therapeutic need for pregnancy: an urge to create life in the wake of death. The opening routine here recounts the most recent birth, and her worries that Brown might be thinking about fucking the midwife.

As well as the two new babies, she and Brown have also broken up and gotten back together at least once since her last outing, a pattern that she now recognises (and hopes) will play out for the rest of their lives.

Many of Cave’s fans seem to approach her work like a very infrequently released soap opera, but it’s a soap without enough characters. She often references her incompatibility with Brown, describing it as a relationship between ‘an emotionally unstable star sign believer and a bipolar alcoholic,’ and although we can never truly understand the relationships of others, the more fundamental opposition seems to be between an insecure person and a callous one. She’s always been painfully honest, but that trait is bearing less fruit as she cycles through the same dramas again and again.

That could also be the reason that it’s not getting as many laughs as it used to. Her writing still has many unique qualities but it’s not particularly funny any more, aside from one very mad anecdote in which she finds herself hunted by ants for her breastmilk. 

I think she treats the audiences too much like she’d treat her children, what with all the puppets and little plays and storybook readings. Cave is a unique voice in comedy and deserves respect, but some kind of evolution is needed.

Review date: 18 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy