The Screen Test ★★★★★

Audiences at the Fringe are always being encouraged to take a punt on trying something about which you really don’t know much at all. With over three thousand shows on offer, how to choose? One method is thematic pairing. If you’ve seen a show you’ve enjoyed, stick with the topic. Because The Recs loved Bloody Ballad of Bette Davis with its 1970s clash of Old versus New Hollywood, it led us to the Silver Screen even further back in time to The Screen Test.

The show follows Betsy Bitterly, a would-be actress with stars in her eyes and an insatiable desire to make it in the land they call Hollywood. Starting in the early 1930s, we meet our heroine during her first screen test. She’s peppy, hyper-enthusiastic and, as she tells us in a dazzlingly fast and self-evident stream-of-consciousness, “the gift of the gab”. Not necessarily the key talent for silent movies.

When the unseen casting director interrupts, asking why Betsy is telling him all this, she optimistically suggests that she wanted to “share my story with you to get to know me better”.

And get to know her better we do. What follows is a breathless showbiz picaresque charting her attempts to make it big in Tinseltown: from her first role as Peasant Whore Number 3 in the 1935 MGM romantic comedy, Head Over Heels, to joining the studio system with a 7-year contact (“where they own you, but in a fun way”), to filming instructional shorts to her getting a lead role and beyond.

While the subject matter (aspiring actress seeking fame in Hollywood) is familiar, the telling is not. Performer and writer Bebe Cave’s debut solo Fringe show is exceptional. What elevates The Screen Test is the sheer quality of her script. Her dialogue is exquisite. Playing around with vernacular, parodying Golden Age movie tropes, skewer the endemic everyday sexism of the industry with such a deftness of touch, perfectly pacing the sine wave of Betsy’s career, switching between laugh-out-loud comedy to moments of heartfelt pathos, we do get to know Betsy well. It’s rare that a character is so beautifully crafted within an hour-long show that you feel such empathy for her. Not afraid to admit that this hard-bitten critic let out an involuntary “aww” at her poignant, literal downfall.

That Bebe Cave is soaked in sweat by the end of the show is a measure of the verve and gusto with which she imbues her character with everything she’s got. Her level of commitment, energy and stamina to depict every traumatising, hardening step she takes in her unquenchable desire to make it big. In a show that asks the question what is it to be a star, the answer is in Bebe Cave, you are looking at one!