Bebe Cave: Swoon – Pleasance Dome

You have to marvel at the sheer industry of Bebe Cave.

Swoon is not simply an hour of character comedy. Cave appears to have swallowed a substantial chunk of Victorian art history, constructed a beautifully gilded Pre-Raphaelite world of curtains, frames and tableaux, assembled an armoury of hats and costumes, and then decided to perform all of the people inhabiting it herself.

The result is extremely funny and occasionally almost impossible to keep up with.

Cave’s starting point is John Everett Millais’s Ophelia and Elizabeth Siddal, the woman who modelled for one of the most recognisable paintings in British art. From there, through the fictional Bertrude Siddal, she charges headlong into Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt, Victorian womanhood, beauty, madness, muses and the uncomfortable fascination of male artists with beautiful women who are considerably more convenient when silent, motionless or dead.

“We can’t all be skinny bints in a lake, some of us have to be fat bitches on land,” Cave observes. It is very funny, but also rather neatly encapsulates her argument.

The extraordinary set gives Cave a succession of frames through which she creates and demolishes her own tableaux. Characters arrive at extraordinary speed, frequently heralded by little more than another hat, while a life-sized Lizzie Siddal mannequin with streaming red hair adds to the glorious absurdity.

There is a serious amount of research beneath all this silliness. Even Rossetti’s extraordinary decision to have Siddal’s coffin exhumed seven years after her death to recover the manuscript of poems he had buried with her (he needs the money!) becomes further ammunition.

If there is a criticism, it is simply that there is too much good material. It feels as though Cave has compressed a two-hour show into a one-hour Fringe slot. I occasionally found myself three sentences behind, still processing one gag while another two disappeared over the horizon.

By the closing stages, Cave herself seems to realise the problem. She’s racing around like a mad woman, announcing that bits will have to be cut, while the clock marches relentlessly onwards. There is even a knock at the door.

And she overruns.

At the Edinburgh Fringe, where every minute between shows matters, Swoon actually made me late for my next one. I should have been furious.

I completely forgive her.

It’s joyous.

Playing until August 30th 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026BEBECAV

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 19th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: