Review: Fleabag at the Soho Theatre

Fleabag

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on Tuesday 13th May 2014

After a hugely successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Soho Theatre last year, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s self-penned one-woman show has returned to London’s Soho Theatre. Fleabag proves that not only does Waller-Bridge have outstanding comic timing and the ability to completely captivate her audience, but her writing is also absolutely hilarious.

Fleabag tells the story of a young woman who is completely obsessed with sex. She used to run a guinea pig themed café with her best friend Boo, but when Boo accidentally commits suicide after finding out her boyfriend cheated on her, the café runs into some serious problems and is set to close if she cannot find the money to pay for the Lease. 

Underneath her funny and cool exterior is a young woman struggling to keep her head above water due to much darker issues. Her mother died two years ago following a double mastectomy, she very rarely has contact with her father after he took up with her godmother following her mother’s death, only sees her sister once every three months and has been dumped by her boyfriend Harry. 

To combat all of the stresses of her everyday life, she stays up most nights watching pornography on the internet and indulges in dark fantasies. She even at one point asks her father if he would find her attractive if she wasn’t his daughter, just to try and gain some self-confidence. She uses humour to mask the pain of her everyday life but eventually even this façade breaks down and the raw emotion Waller-Bridge exudes is enough to garner sympathy from the audience, even if we don’t fully believe she’s deserving of it.

Waller-Bridge’s lines are delivered with such clarity and wit that I was snorting with laughter and my abs received the most thorough workout they’ve had in a long time. One-person shows are extremely difficult and require a highly talented actor to captivate an audience for the duration of the performance, but my attention was fixed solely on Waller-Bridge as she told Fleabag’s story. 

Reviewed by Laura Kate Jones

Fleabag runs at the Soho Theatre until Sunday 25th May 2014.
Please visit www.sohotheatre.com for further information and tickets.

Photo Credit: Gordon Jack

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