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, mu...
