Comedy review: Cave Women, Marlin's Wynd, Edinburgh
Cave Women, Marlin's Wynd, Edinburgh * * * * *
Jessie has a something of a spatial awareness problem with her microphone stand and she is still making notes. But there is absolutely nothing that can stop you from falling in love with this funny, fragile, hilarious and heart-breaking hour. The rawness and the newness of it simply add to its power, and the tiny unscripted asides to the laughter.
Jessie Cave has already shown that she has an unerring sense of where to place her comedy to have you in love, in tears and in fits of giggles all in the same moment. No one in the world does it like this.
Except maybe her sister Bebe.
Sitting on stools, with scripts and handwritten cardboard signs, the sisters pluck moments and thoughts from their lives and magically crystallise them in laughter. “Extracts from a fight” turns sisterly bickering into full frontal funny and “In case he was looking” leads us into a sweetly neurotic storyline about a boy in a bookshop. Everywhere in this enthralling, enchanting piece there are odd thoughts : children peeing on plaits, nipples, buying a dress, Chicken wing eating competitions, cosplay and stealing towels from an octagenarian. They seem random, but then again, not. Jessie's diary and Bebe's dreams are here, Alfie and the children are here. and everyone in the room is probably about as 'here' as I have seen any audience in Edinburgh. This show envelopes you. It is for, and in many ways about their brother Ben who died in March. And I would like to think he is here too.
I cannot imagine where the progress of this work might take it. It is already a beautiful, funny and frankly unforgettable thing.
Until 25 August