Bebe Cave’s debut show as a writer, The Screen Test, produced by Bighead Comedy, and presenred this week at the Seven Dials Playhouse, introduces us to Betsy Bitters, aspiring 1930s-40s actress.
Looking alarmingly like a cross between Mary Pickford and Jeanette MacDonald, Cave is as far out as you can get as she staggers, dances, or shouts incomprehensibly through various screen tests.
Despite the historical inaccuracies that bothered me as a devotee of the period, this is an amusing look at how one person can find themselves caught up in the machine of the 7-year contract and the controlling producer husband (who says at one point she should lose six stone – a very English measurement but then Betsy is English).
Although the material feels a little thin for a full hour, there were moments I liked a lot when Cave touched on more surreal aspects of Betsy’s story. The ending was particularly potent, and there is a dark undertone of women on the fringes of stardom needing to endure groping and meet impossible beauty standards to be successful.
With clever use of video work and a prop dummy to stand for an influential husband, Betsy’s screen tests magnify various tropes of the featured actress (whore, barmaid, mother to an older man) with unhinged abandon. It’s never subtle and occasionally unintelligible.
The Screen Test pushes at the tropes of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and those who found themselves owned by the studio but left exploited in person and neglected in career. Cave’s Betsy is not easy to like as she develops a cash-heavy, possession-focused, mean streak, but ambition is her main driver.
From the early request to throw flowers through to the numerous requests for validation, the audience becomes complicit in the story from the start. Betsy Bitters, 25, a blue-eyed blonde, is a warning, a ghost of all the girls with stars in their eyes.
As a comedy, there are lots of laughs. It’s a physically manic performance from Cave. But as a story that could say more, it currently feels a little stretched and occasionally loses focus.
3 stars.
The Screen Test continues at Seven Dials Playhouse until 15 Feb with tickets here.