Section:GDN 12 PaGe:10 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 16:47 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian
  10 Thursday 29 August 2019
  Arts

In the play, she’s

surprisingly

cruel in

comparison

with the TV

show. There are

several fat jokes

‘Men squirmed

when she made

eye contact’

PHOTOGRAPHS: MATT HUMPHREY; PA; BBC/TWO BROTHERS/KEVIN BAKER

‘The monologue

is solid ... Phoebe

Waller-Bridge

as Fleabag

Fleabag the

TV show, with

Sian Cliff ord and

Olivia Colman

KW: It’s tough to keep an audience

engaged for an hour when you’re not

moving. I couldn’t look away.

LS: You saw a lot more of

Waller-Bridge as a physical comedian

• especially impersonating all the
  repressed men in her life. Her face
  had to do a lot more work than on TV,
  which was all about the aside. In the
  theatre, it was all aside, in a way.
  HJD: There was one aside where
  she’s talking about the sister’s
  husband, and she says, “He’s not
  even sexy enough to beat his wife.”
  Then she says, “Joking!” I couldn’t
  tell if that was an aside from Fleabag
  or Waller-Bridge? On TV it’s much
  more wink-wink. I needed it to feel
  diff erent to not feel like a cash cow.
  LS: It’s symptomatic of our cultural

inability to let anything end: the

franchise of the franchise of the

franchise.

KW: As a play, you could tell it was

six years old. The monologue is solid

but nothing hugely special. And the

staging is incredibly ordinary. I’ve

just been at the Edinburgh fringe,

where I saw 50 more exciting shows.

And when you think how many plays

are struggling for a stage, it feels

slightly unfair when the same thing

gets done again. But then, has there

ever been a one-woman show in the

West End that has been so fi nancially

viable? That in itself is incredible.

HJD: Does it feel dated because

people have tried to replicate it?

KW: Possibly. In interviews from

2013, when they fi rst staged it,

After Fleabag’s

tearaway success

on TV, Phoebe

Wa l le r-Br id ge’s

2013 monologue is

back on the stage.

Hannah J Davies,

Laura Snapes and

Kate Wyver ask:

does it still work?

The show is just so much more

developed, so the play can’t help but

feel a little disappointing.

Laura Snapes: I liked seeing the

original source material. But the

play was originally such a bolt from

the blue. If you see it now, you’re

always aware: that’s Phoebe Waller-

Bridge. When it’s freighted with the

phenomenon, it doesn’t work.

Hannah J Davies: It was like MTV

Unplugged – something you already

know in a more intimate form. There

was a sense people weren’t getting

gratifi cation from connecting with

the show, but from seeing someone

famous in an intimate setting. People

had an expectation that they wanted

to see replicated and she did it.

KW: Did she get a massive cheer as

soon as she walked on?

HJD: Yeah. People were taking

photos. The woman next to me

laughed at every single line.

KW: The laughs were

disproportionate to how funny it

was. The woman next to me paid

£177 to be there and ran out when it

fi nished to get a selfi e. It felt like the

cultural capital of being able to say, “I

was there”. The crowd was mouthing

along , pre-empting the laughs.

HJD: I understand singing along to

a band, but theatre is meant to be a

quiet experience.

KW: No! I wish people could interact

with it more because that was the

original idea. You’re in this tiny

60-seater and you feel as if she’s

whispering just to you. But I did not

feel any intimacy in that room. Did it

feel intimate to you?

LS: At fi rst, she was looking into

middle distance, and I thought, that’s

not going to work. But she started

making eye contact. You could see

men squirming. What did you think

of the play on a technical level?

After six

years, two television series, several

theatrical revivals (including a sold-

out Off -Broadway run) and a shot-

for-shot French remake , Fleabag is

back in theatres for one fi nal run:

just Phoebe Waller-Bridge, alone on

a stool, performing the one-woman

show that made her the toast of

Hollywood. Since it’s been widely

perceived as a tract on millennial

womanhood, we assembled three

millennial critics to discuss the play’s

relevance, status and sexual politics.

Kate Wyver: After the TV show, the

play felt like going to a gallery and

looking at the artist’s sketchbooks.

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