There’s definitely a line between deftly mining a chaotic personal life for comic material and probably being too vulnerable to be allowed on a stage, and I guess it is to the credit of Jessie Cave that it’s genuinely hard to tell which side she is on.
In fact Cave – who it’s obligatory to mention had a minor role in the Harry Potter films – presents as a slightly dotty posh person who says mad things at times but does so with a conviction so total that you don’t really question it too much.
Indeed an early anecdote about her having a breakdown after attempting to stage a nativity musical at her kids’ school is charming enough, but as we get into the ins and outs of her extremely complicated domestic life it all gets a bit WTF. She’s in a long-term on/off relationship with fellow comic Alfie Brown, with whom she has four children - despite acknowledging they are totally unsuited to each other - and much of the show is taken up with pretend therapy sessions in which she airs an almighty amount of dirty laundry.
To be fair it’s solid material, she clearly doesn’t have time for a large amount of extra stuff in her life to write a show about, and Cave’s twee flourishes and apparently genuine fondness of shadow puppetry serve to moderate the bitterness to a degree (the elaborate-by-Fringe-standards set is a homemade puppet theatre). The couple did shows about each other in 2018 and clearly feel happy enough about repeating the idea six years on. Nothing would be more patronising than saying this is inappropriate material.
There is, however, the undeniable and awkward sense that we have been sucked into a couple’s ongoing psychodrama. I found it a bit much, to be honest, a sense that the rawness and gasping intimacy robbed it of a certain comic effect that might better be achieved with a degree more detachment. But also I was immediately possessed by the urge to run out and book tickets for Brown’s show to get the rest of the goss, which is probably not something you can say for anyone else this Fringe.