Fleabag Live at QFT
There is a spotlight on a chair and somebody in it anxious to tell a story but they constantly derail themselves, spiralling off onto tangents, steamy-streams-of-consciousness and abrupt sexual confessions. So "Fleabag", the original play, is very much like Ronnie Corbett's solo spot on "The Two Ronnies", then.
"Only joking!" as Phoebe Waller-Bridge barks as an aside to the theatre audience after one particularly heartless joke. There is savagery here. This is the story of a woman too numb to feel anything who wants to feel something, anything. She limbos through degradation after degradation and never asks us to like her. We do anyway - she's fearless, after a fashion. You admire the candour and her unbidden generosity: this is Olympic standard over-sharing. There's no plot. There's not really a through-line - you could say that her shop closing down and the gradual revelations about her best friend Boo are the spine of the show - but beyond that it is admirably loose and unencumbered: a series of jokes and set-pieces strung together. And they are very funny set-pieces, beautifully performed. A sequence where "Fleabag" repeatedly takes naked selfies for a voracious boyfriend in the disabled toilets at work is, suddenly, an amazing mime sequence: slow, detailed and elaborate, perfectly judged. Waller-Bridge is a remarkable performer: casual, confident and off the cuff. Her naturalism is, I assume, carefully cultivated. The asides to the audience are probably scripted but there is always doubt in your mind. She also gives good drunk.
A confession. I have never seen the TV series. I KNOW! I'm aware of it because, well, how could you not be? But I have seen precisely one and a half episodes of the show. I really liked them and I really like that Mercedes Benz advert that rips them off. They were selling a cocktail called "The Hot Priest" in the QFT bar, and when Andrew Scott appeared in an advert for "Present Laughter" there was an audible swoon in the room. James Corden did not get one of those when he popped up. So I took an interest, you know? As someone who writes plays (which this nearly was) and is interested in cultural ideas and, specifically, things that are really, really successful, I really wanted to check out the source material: the UR-Fleabag. To see what I could nick, obviously.
Probably not much, if I'm honest.
If I'd seen this in Edinburgh in 2013 (or whenever it was) would I have thought this was the basis for a world-beating, Bafta gobbling career? I don't think so. Its a great show, perched awkwardly between stand-up (or sit-down) and theatre. The direction is competent and un-showy. The story is thin and bits of it break off and float away, never to be retrieved. It constantly plays to the gallery (not a criticism) and has the sort of crunching gear changes more usually witnessed in a supermarket car park at two in the morning. At its heart it is the story of a woman trying to fuck the pain away and murdering a guinea pig, which is unusual in a sympathetic protagonist. But Fleabag is sympathetic: you like her. She learns nothing. Her character doesn't develop. As the story re-sets at the end she remains unchanged: she just fucks up in a slightly different way. As she tells you the relentlessly terrible things she's done with that familiar goofy smile and conniving side-eye, you gasp but you still want more. And that's all Waller-Bridge. As dark and cruel as the script was in the theatre I bet it was a lot darker on the page. She has a lightness of touch, she is felicitous: she brings warmth to numbness and joy to cruelty. The writing is good but the performance was magical.
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| "Something something fannies something..." |
"Only joking!" as Phoebe Waller-Bridge barks as an aside to the theatre audience after one particularly heartless joke. There is savagery here. This is the story of a woman too numb to feel anything who wants to feel something, anything. She limbos through degradation after degradation and never asks us to like her. We do anyway - she's fearless, after a fashion. You admire the candour and her unbidden generosity: this is Olympic standard over-sharing. There's no plot. There's not really a through-line - you could say that her shop closing down and the gradual revelations about her best friend Boo are the spine of the show - but beyond that it is admirably loose and unencumbered: a series of jokes and set-pieces strung together. And they are very funny set-pieces, beautifully performed. A sequence where "Fleabag" repeatedly takes naked selfies for a voracious boyfriend in the disabled toilets at work is, suddenly, an amazing mime sequence: slow, detailed and elaborate, perfectly judged. Waller-Bridge is a remarkable performer: casual, confident and off the cuff. Her naturalism is, I assume, carefully cultivated. The asides to the audience are probably scripted but there is always doubt in your mind. She also gives good drunk.
A confession. I have never seen the TV series. I KNOW! I'm aware of it because, well, how could you not be? But I have seen precisely one and a half episodes of the show. I really liked them and I really like that Mercedes Benz advert that rips them off. They were selling a cocktail called "The Hot Priest" in the QFT bar, and when Andrew Scott appeared in an advert for "Present Laughter" there was an audible swoon in the room. James Corden did not get one of those when he popped up. So I took an interest, you know? As someone who writes plays (which this nearly was) and is interested in cultural ideas and, specifically, things that are really, really successful, I really wanted to check out the source material: the UR-Fleabag. To see what I could nick, obviously.
Probably not much, if I'm honest.
If I'd seen this in Edinburgh in 2013 (or whenever it was) would I have thought this was the basis for a world-beating, Bafta gobbling career? I don't think so. Its a great show, perched awkwardly between stand-up (or sit-down) and theatre. The direction is competent and un-showy. The story is thin and bits of it break off and float away, never to be retrieved. It constantly plays to the gallery (not a criticism) and has the sort of crunching gear changes more usually witnessed in a supermarket car park at two in the morning. At its heart it is the story of a woman trying to fuck the pain away and murdering a guinea pig, which is unusual in a sympathetic protagonist. But Fleabag is sympathetic: you like her. She learns nothing. Her character doesn't develop. As the story re-sets at the end she remains unchanged: she just fucks up in a slightly different way. As she tells you the relentlessly terrible things she's done with that familiar goofy smile and conniving side-eye, you gasp but you still want more. And that's all Waller-Bridge. As dark and cruel as the script was in the theatre I bet it was a lot darker on the page. She has a lightness of touch, she is felicitous: she brings warmth to numbness and joy to cruelty. The writing is good but the performance was magical.
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