Rosalie Minnitt @ Underbelly Cowgate
Clementine is an hour of delightfully deranged character comedy from Rosalie Minnitt
After a great time at last year’s Fringe, Rosalie Minitt brings her Regency riot Clementine back to Edinburgh for a short run. The show proves to be a high-energy, prop-heavy narrative adventure, following the titular Clementine as she hurriedly looks for love in the 24 hours before her parents disown her for being an unmarriable spinster.
Minnitt brings a school-child brattery to her character with an energetic sarcasm and a quick poke of the tongue (it’s easy to draw a line in places between her and Rik Mayall). With that in mind, she’s also quite Disneyfied – addressing her audience as little stars (who light up the room with tiny plastic candles) and singing her way through a few numbers Menken and Ashman would be proud of.
The plot is fairly straightforward – go to ball, find man, lose man, find scary family member everyone has warned her about, a pantomime-esque happy ending – but Minnitt’s onstage demeanour and interesting choices carry the age-old quest for love. Kind of like A Knight’s Tale for stage comedy, her updated references, juxtaposing with period features (Opium Rave, Pinterest board for men ft. Stuart Little) make for a lovely watch.
At times it can all feel a little too much, too quirky for the sake of things, and at points there’s so much going on, you don’t quite know where to look. It certainly adds to the whirlwind which is our heroine (messy unhinged girlies gotta be present throughout history), but sometimes the (very impressive) tech drowns out our performer and it’s difficult to parse her lines.
Clementine is a rollicking romp – the perfect show to introduce folk to the Fringe, and to see what possible worlds can be built in a city of black box attics and cellars.
Rosalie Minnitt: Clementine, Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly), run ended