Rosalie Minnitt: Clementine

Fresh from a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2023, Rosalie Minnitt brings her debut hour Clementine for a week-long stint at Soho Theatre. Read on to hear what Funny Women thought of the show…

Bonkers, whip smart and garishly pink, Clementine is a manic modern day (ish) one-woman Jane Austen novel dipped in glue, coated in glitter and stuffed into a brilliantly written 1-hour show. If you imagine a Bridgerton fever dream, with surreal curiosities like pink toy guns and Sylvanian families thrown in and mix it with the hysteria of modern-day meme and pop culture spanning the last decade, you will have something close to this show. It took me a second to adjust, but its gaudy wildness is marvellous.

Memes, trauma bonding and misdiagnosing ADHD, Clementine compares Gen z’s toxic traits to the toxic treatment of the ‘hysterical’ unmarried women in her twenties (or as Clementine calls them, ‘single sacks of shit’) in Jane Austen’s era, showing us the strange similarities of the two and how Gen z can relate.

In true Austen style there are a few playful satirical jabs throughout the show, as our wealthy main character attends a ball with a 14 layer solid gold corset and chucks her young, poor and recently childless maid (Jackie), killing her off moments after she is introduced. Clementine is also childlike, with toys for sisters, a mood board of dream men (3 of whom are horses) and merrily about gallops on all fours to and fro.

There is an impressive amount of content in this show, which is jam packed with a clever hybrid combination of modern and Austen-style language, sprinkled with puns in every other sentence. A particular crowd favourite was during the climactic main character montage of the story, as Clementine escapes an asylum on a quest to find her spinster Aunt, against a backdrop of loud music and strobe lighting, the voiceover tells us Clementine is slaying and slaying. The crazed fever dream ends happily, with a moral to the story quickly tied up at the end.

While rather niche, this Austen parody has an incredible amount of energy, talent and wit and I thoroughly enjoyed.

You can catch Clementine @ 7:00 PM Weds-Weds 15-29 November at Soho Theatre, grab a ticket here!

Photo Credit: Soho Theatre