Rosalie Minnitt @ Pleasance Courtyard

A sequel’s a pretty rare thing at the Fringe. Most artists here rely on fresh audiences, so stories that run across years can be a hard sell. Enter Clementine 2: Rosalie Minnitt’s madcap Regency fever dream, back for the follow-up after a successful run in 2023 and reprise in 2024. Then, we saw Clementine – a gleefully anachronistic amalgam of Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods and an Austenian Bennet sister – search for love, only to embrace instead self-love (a concept here described as a psychological cheat code in which oneself is “always always always the victim”). We left her a “fully actualised young woman”. But now, financial disaster strikes Clementine’s family, leaving them “down to our last billion”, and sending Clementine on a whole new voyage of self discovery. 

If Austen was the touchstone for Clementine, Clementine 2 plunders Hugo’s Les Misérables, as our heroine finds herself embroiled in revolutionary fervour while also charting a lifelong rivalry with childhood best-frenemy Satsuma. Throughout, Minnett plays Clementine with an infectious energy that feeds off her audience: though the show is tightly written, Minnett’s truest glee shines out when improvising around the characters she casts from the house. If Minnitt has any reservations about launching straight into a sequel most of the audience haven’t seen the prequel to, or delivering decidedly meme-laden gags to a crowd that won’t always get them, she shows no sign of it.

Does Clementine’s “one brain cell” schtick wear a bit thin by the end of this (second) hour? A little – and we may feel a tad over-bombarded with, say, The Rest is History clips to make any true connection with our heroine. But Clemheads will find plenty of entertainment, and reason to look forward to the threequel – after Austen, what might be next?

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Rosalie Minnitt: Clementine 2, Pleasance Courtyard (Beside), until 30 Aug, 3.35pm, £14.50-£16.50