If you are looking for a Fringe theatre experience that is at the same time shocking, laugh out loud funny, crass, and heartbreaking, then Fleabag is for you.
Creator and writer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, pulls no punches in her stage play about a dysfunctional young woman who glibly describes herself as greedy, apathetic, morally bankrupt, and a sex addict. The characterisation is knowing and clever, with a front that entertains and deflects as she recounts to the audience these 'funny' things that happen to her in her life. But as her story unfolds we see accidental glimpses behind the veneer that reveal that all is not as it seems.
Waller-Bridge's script is confronting, universal, visceral, and real, and it doesn't miss a trick. Inhabited by a range of characters, both men and women, it is accurate and honest, truthful in a way we, the audience, can instantly recognise. We've met these people before.
The seed of what would become 'Fleabag' was first written as a 10-minute monologue by Waller-Bridge as a dare to make friend, and long-time collaborator, Vicky Jones, laugh. Laugh she did, and from there grew a stage play, which Jones directed and in which Waller-Bridge originally played the titular role. The success of the play led to it being adapted for a television series by BBC Three, which in turn was picked up by the on-demand video service, Amazon Originals. Waller-Bridge has since won a BAFTA for Fleabag and is working on a second series (amongst a score of other projects) due out in 2019.
The current iteration, for the 2018 Adelaide Fringe, is on at The Box in the Garden of Unearthly Delights. The venue is aptly named. Actor, Maddie Rice, performs on a stage that is empty, but for a chair and a single fluoro light. There are no tricks, no distractions, and nowhere to hide.
Rice, as Fleabag, is brilliant. She captures every nuance, inhabits every character fully, and paints her world for the audience with little else than her delivery and the odd sound effect. We are transported across London, from Fleabag's flat to her failing café, via the 'tube', and the audience hangs on every word and follows every step, even when you can see what is coming and you cringe and want to call out "Don't do it!".
Reviewed by Petra Schulenburg, Wednesday 28th February 2018.