Jessie Cave: I Loved Her

A love story set in the age of social media, Jessie Cave’s I Loved Her is more a one-woman show than straight standup. She begins waiting for the three dots of an incoming message on an oversized, crudely drawn cardboard iPhone. That’s the other thing you should probably know about Jessie Cave – she is relentlessly and unashamedly quirky, so much so that she has made a collage of other people’s receipts for no reason other than that they just left them there. She mixes her own history ("my first love was Screech from Saved by the Bell") with social media tips for a successful life ("when I want to make someone jealous I just Instagram a picture of a random man’s hand").

After getting pregnant on a one-night stand she lays bare all the thoughts and feelings that go along with new love and young motherhood. Using shadow puppetry and child-like masks as a way of impersonating her new boyfriend and baby she tells of the ins and outs of a very modern relationship. Her neuroses about ex-girlfriends will hit a nerve with anyone that’s ever discovered an old love letter. After a blistering start and spew of raw emotion, I Loved Her loses steam toward the end with only a few stories punctuated with laughter. Very much a 21st-century romance peppered with embarrassing and all too recognisable anecdotes, Cave has created a beautiful one-person romcom for millennials.