Cabbage The Clown

A costume maker who ended up on stage

Cabbage the Clown is the work of Eliza Nelson, who arrived at performance through a wardrobe department rather than a comedy club. Nelson trained in costume construction at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and has worked as a costume designer and wardrobe supervisor, and has said the character came out of lockdown and out of a blunt question about why they were studying costume construction in the first place without being able to sew.

What emerged was a figure in white and green greasepaint and a run of non-binary silhouettes, closer to buffoon than to the gender exaggeration that drag usually trades in. Before any full-length show existed, the act had won two of London's major drag competitions, played the main stage at Leicester Square for London Pride, founded a drag-clown collective called Funny Business and produced a series of sell-out club nights. The online footage has passed eight million views, which is the figure that now anchors every listing.

Nelson's own summary of the style, given to an interviewer ahead of the 2025 Fringe, runs: gay and camp and gay, mostly falling over, pop-culture vomit, gluttonous levels of props. The comparison offered for the physicality was an ant trying to shift something far too big for it.

Cinemadrome, built in 2025

The debut hour, Cinemadrome, was produced by BIGHEAD Comedy and ran at Underbelly George Square in the Buttercup room from 30 July to 24 August 2025 at 21:45, sixty minutes with no interval. The premise is a minimum-wage employee of a cinema chain that has swallowed its competitors, rotated by a disembodied loudspeaker between the ticket desk, the concessions counter and the bins, and daydreaming elaborately in the gaps.

The hour is built from costume rather than from jokes. Pieces include a jacket made out of cinema rubbish, a popcorn monster that draws applause as it arrives, and a slushie cup scaled far beyond usefulness. Puppetry is done with the available objects: a flannel shirt on a stick stands in for a love interest, brooms and coat hangers for other characters. There is a slow dance with a mop, lip-syncs projected over footage from The NeverEnding Story and Titanic, and Mad Libs played with the room during the character's downtime. Running under it is a thin romantic thread about someone met in a club who has not rung back.

A review pile that splits down the middle

Fringe 2025 produced an unusually wide spread. Chortle's Tim Harding gave two and a half stars on 2 August, arguing that the outfit was too often the point in itself, that the floor-writhing covered for underwritten material, and that the finale was draggy in both senses. Fest gave three stars on 4 August, calling the mop routine a stunning piece of comedic choreography and the hour an exciting rollercoaster of queer joy, while noting it loses coherence under the weight of its own ideas. British Theatre Guide's Tony Trigwell-Jones found it entertaining and moving, and flagged inexperience in handling a room, but rated the decision to make the clown someone struggling on through life rather than a target.

At the other end, The Student ran five stars in September 2025, reporting a crowd in hysterics and singling out the makeup's fusion of drag and clown conventions. The act's tour listings now collect five-star notices from Binge Fringe, The Student, EdFringeReview and Broadway Baby, four stars from The Reviews Hub, Fringesider, One4Review and British Theatre Guide, and a place among the best-reviewed comedy shows of Fringe 2025. The consistent reading across the split is that the craft — costume, choreography, clowning — is well ahead of the structure.

Soho, a UK tour, and a second Fringe

Cinemadrome transferred to Soho Theatre in October 2025, closing on 11 October. Reviewing for BroadwayWorld, Kat Mokrynski gave three stars, praised the clowning, costumes and choreography, described the trash jacket as surprisingly stunning, and found the narrative fragmented and the club-night subplot repeatedly dropped. Technical trouble on the night was noted, with the sound operator apparently short of rehearsal.

BIGHEAD Comedy logs the show as its tenth production, with Edinburgh in August 2025, Soho Theatre in October 2025 and again in May 2026, a UK tour from April to July 2026 and a return to Edinburgh in August 2026. The touring leg opened at The Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol on 24 April 2026 at 7.30pm, presented by Chuckle Busters, tickets £14, 16+, before dates including Leeds and a Manchester slot at the Creatures Comedy Festival in July. The Soho return played the Upstairs room from 14 to 16 May 2026.

The second Fringe run moved rooms rather than scaling up: Underbelly Cowgate, Belly Button, 5 to 17 August 2026 at 8.25pm, from £10.50 including booking fee, sixty minutes, 16+, with audience participation and strong language flagged in the listing. Access is limited — one flight of fifteen stairs, raked seating, no wheelchair spaces.

Where it stands in October 2026

The most recent performances were that Cowgate run, which ended on 17 August 2026. Writing his Fringe diary on 7 August 2026, Bobby Carroll described the show as a fusion of clowning and drag like a live-action SpongeBob SquarePants episode set in a dystopian multiplex: expressive, elaborately costumed, occasionally rushed, and at its peak during a manic lip-sync to cinema branding idents. His verdict was energetic and heartfelt rather than tightly plotted, which is more or less where the 2025 reviewers landed a year earlier.

That makes two Soho Theatre runs, a spring-to-summer tour and two Edinburgh seasons off a single debut hour, with no follow-up show publicly announced. A handful of dates are listed for the 2026–27 period; the hour as it exists is still Cinemadrome, and the open question is whether the next one resolves the structural complaint that every reviewer, generous or not, has made about it.