Every now and then a comedy concept comes along that seems so obvious, you can’t believe no one has done it before. How can Rosalie Minnitt’s Clementine be the first character-comedy show to really mine the absurdities of our love of all things Jane Austen, all things frilly-bonneted and Bridgerton? OK, it’s not a completely untapped seam of funny: think West End improv perennial Austentatious or that fantastic touring theatre hit Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort Of). But Minnitt is the first to distil it into a single comedy character, and to make it far funnier than we have any right to expect – not by doubling down on period pastiche, but by making her alter ego both none-more-Regency and thrillingly 21st century too.
The character debuted in 2022 and Minnitt, 28, has been threatening to retire her for a while. But demand never quite goes away and a UK tour now beckons for a character her creator didn’t initially envisage as a comedy act at all. Lady Clementine’s genesis took place under lockdown. “Everyone had lost their minds a bit,” says Minnitt, a graduate of Durham University, where she performed with the Durham Revue. “And I had lost a bit of confidence in myself. I was working in a bar, then in a summer camp, then for a charity. Then I lost my job and was on furlough. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. I was lost and directionless. Then I went through a breakup – classic!” She rolls her eyes. “So I was like, ‘I need to put this energy into something.’ And it was this.”
