Period spoofs often feel like corsets: restrictive, predictable, and a little suffocating. Rosalie Minnitt’s Clementine, by contrast, is a full-throttle explosion of chaos where historical anachronisms collide with TikTok sounds, obscure pop-culture references, and surreal absurdity, creating something entirely its own.
Clementine skewers our obsession with a sanitised, Regency-hued past, using a Gen Z lens to ask whether we have truly escaped the soul-sucking search for ‘The One’, or merely swapped ballrooms for dating apps.
Beneath the laughter pulses a sharp feminist critique: the performative pressures placed on women, past and present, are as absurd as they are relentless.
Clementine review – quick links
Find a husband or face the asylum
Originally debuting in 2022 and gaining traction at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, this current tour sees Clementine reworked with even more chaos. We meet Lady Clementine Chessington-World-of-Adventures on the eve of her 27th birthday, with one night to find a husband or face the asylum.
Historical accuracy is gleefully abandoned in favour of a playful, absurdist universe where anything can happen. From the first line of the performance at Theatre Royal Bath, the audience was roaring; laughter punctuated nearly every gag, a testament to Minnitt’s infectious energy as a writer and performer.
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Minnitt’s brilliance lies in taking a character who could easily be insufferable – stroppy, conceited, delusional – and making her utterly irresistible. Her improvisational dexterity shines when she plucks an audience member to play her hapless suitor.
Adorned with a powdered wig and scout sash, her volunteer (victim?) gamely absorbed an extraordinary amount of stage time, much to the delight of the crowd.
Clementine’s comedy is as much in the ad-lib as in the script itself.
A pastiche of feminist references
Intelligent silliness drives the show. Projected images of Suffragettes and period-drama clips clash brilliantly with viral TikTok sounds. Early on, the meme-ified ‘I am 27 years old’ line from 2005’s Pride and Prejudice sets the tone, while Jo March’s monologue from Greta Gerwig’s Little Women later grounds the absurdity with unexpected emotional weight.
Humour oscillates between the calculated and cultured to the downright absurd: Clementine’s 67 sisters turn out to be Sylvanian Families characters; the Titanic sinks… in the 1700s. Not every gag lands perfectly, but the show’s inventiveness keeps the audience laughing throughout.
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At its heart, Clementine is a feminist manifesto disguised as chaos. Minnitt skewers patriarchal norms with precision, showing how historical pressures – marriage, propriety and the quest for a suitable husband – have morphed into modern pressures – dating apps, Instagram aesthetics and performative selfhood.
Amid the absurdity, self-love emerges as the ultimate triumph. Hilarious, chaotic, and genuinely heart-warming, Clementine is a riotous, incisive reminder that comedy can be socially sharp, emotionally astute and utterly entertaining all at once.
Clementine‘s UK tour continues through to June and next travels to the Theatr Clywd in Mold on 23 and 24 January and Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton on 14 February.
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