Phoebe Waller-Bridges one-woman show leaves you wanting more so luckily theres two seasons of the TV series too.

Wednesday 30 October, 2019

If you havent heard of Fleabag by now, youve been deliberately avoiding the world. Phoebe Waller-Bridges uproarious one-woman show, first seen at Edinburgh Fringe in 2013, was turned into a phenomenally successful TV series of the same name by BBC and then distributed internationally through Amazon Prime. The show was nominated for 11 Emmy awards this year, winning four. National Theatre Live filmed the stage version at the Wyndham Theatre in London.

Fleabags character (who is never named) is a scabrous, hypersexualised version of her character Lulu in the Channel Four series Crashing (also conceived and written by Waller-Bridge), albeit much more provocative, damaged, and even more blackly hilarious. The stage version of the story differs in a few small details from the TV series but its pointless to compare them. The show opens and closes with an awkward loan interview (here a voiceover is included, as with a few other scenes), which goes wonderfully and inappropriately wrong, letting us into her characters vulnerability and her disregard for the rules.

Read: Fleabags feminist rethinking of tired screenwriting tools

Waller-Bridge is a big performer with a comic timing all of her own. Shes unafraid of extensiveness, of making her audience wait, and her facial expressions are divinely telling. It is a heightened performance with smaller and larger moments projected so that nothing is unmissable. Memorably drawn-out moments of excruciating hilarity include a conversation with her sister at a feminist talk and her impersonations of her hapless rodent boyfriend. She excels in tension-filled silences which are as revealing as her utterances, and she waits for you to get a joke before continuing. You see where she employs the golden rule of less is more, although it doesnt feel like it as the show is chock-a-block full of emotion and personality. Much of the fun of the TV series is her speaking directly to the camera and of course with her live show you get this most of the time.

On the surface, Fleabags story is about her wonky love life and difficult family relationships but really, its about her being a lonely human whos something of an arsehole on occasion. And about her despair and grief over the loss of her mother and of her best friend and caf co-owner, Boo, whose death came about inadvertently via the results of poor decisions in Fleabags own recent past.

The show runs for 65 minutes. It doesnt feel like a one-woman performance at all. Fleabag leaves you wanting more. Luckily, there is with the TV series. Fleabag is entrancing, uncomfortable, familiar and honest. Waller-Bridge is every bit as charismatic on stage as she is on screen. She cant do any wrong, it seems.

4.5 stars out of 5

FleabagNational Theatre LiveWritten and performed by Phoebe Waller-BridgePresented by DryWrite, Soho Theatre and Annapurna TheatreDistributor: Sharmill FilmsRelease date: 11 October 2019

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Reviews Fleabag, National Theatre Live Performing Arts - ArtsHub UK