Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag is a force to be reckoned with

By EJ Martin.

I didn't want to like Fleabag. Phoebe Waller-Bridge's self-penned one-woman show has received rave reviews from almost every publication known to man since it first debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer, and has been called 'daring', 'vital', 'important', 'devastatingly good'. I am a contrarian and pessimist by nature, and I was certain that anything so relentlessly lauded would by now be falling victim to its own hype, feeling the impossible pressure of all that success. As a result, I've tried hard to differentiate my voice in the crowd, to elevate this response to a plane slightly higher than that of fan-girl love-letter to Miss Waller-Bridge -but I'm afraid it's been quite a struggle.

Fleabag is back at the Soho after a sell-out run to thoseaforementioned rave reviews in September of last year that also saw it add a slew of awards - including an Olivier nomination - to the Fringe First in garnered in Edinburgh 2013. Tickets to this run are like gold dust. The auditorium - the main house at the Soho - was packed to the gunnels. I sat in the front row, next to two loud self-proclaimed 'geezers' with pints in their hands and two to spare on floor next to them. They told me they had never been to the theatre before, they had come because someone in the office had been 'banging on about it'. They started the show laughing at its fast-paced salaciousness, at the swear words and smut, but they finished the performance looking like they had been run over by a train. So did we all.

The show is part stand-up, part story-telling. It features, amongst other characters, a lecherous brother-in-law, a smug and superior sister, a deliciously odd best friend, a convivial Cockney geezer, a chipper antipodean boss. The action of the piece unfolds in various houses, on the tube, in a lecture theatre, in a toilet cubicle, in a guinea-pig themed cafe. We are never in any doubt as to where we are, or who the eponymous Fleabag is talking to. It is all vividly conveyed by Waller-Bridge from the comfort of her single seat on stage - the onlypiece of set. Sometimes, when things get really heated, she stands up for a bit. It is a watertight and electric hour that we spend with Fleabag, not one minute of those sixty wasted, amasterclass on how to hold an audience in the palm of your hand. Waller-Bridge is a spellbinding performer with a vicious, rapier wit that makes you utterly delighted to be in on the joke, rather than the butt of it. She is whip-smart and utterly intoxicating to watch.

Waller-Bridge and Fleabag's director Vicky Jones are long-time collaborators. They are co-artistic directors of DryWritetheatre company, which started life in a room above The George Tavern pub back in 2007. DryWrite ran new writing nights with briefs for playwrights posed as questions such as: 'How do you get the audience to care about a character who has committed a heinous crime?' and 'How do you make an audience feel uncomfortable about the fact that they are laughing?.' This provocative pedigree is evident in Fleabag.Our anti-heroine is damaged goods. She is morally bankrupt, caustic, egocentric, and seems primed to self-destruct. She is also, even at her most repugnant, incredibly likeable. Spending the evening with her is akin to making an excellent, hilarious new friend in the pub, buying them drinks all night, and then having them slide a knife into your ribs as they hug you goodbye.

Fleabag does what only the very best writing does - it shows you the heart of itself, what it really wants to talk to you about, so deftly and skilfully that you don't spot the sleight of hand. Over the course of this hour, you watch a womanunravel. I was intensely caught up in this story, in her battle between intense self-love and self-hatred, all delivered with such blistering wit. But after I had left the theatre, I also realised that the hour I had spent in the auditorium had also been asking me to contemplate modern feminism, the nature of addiction, guilt, the profound loneliness of urban living.

DryWrite's mission statement about the ambitions for thecompany includes the following: "to produce plays that articulate women intelligently and provocatively and to honestly reflect their own experiences. This isn’t at the cost of male characters or with the agenda to lecture about feminism; we want to shed light on relationships, power, family, love and politics with even-handedness and truth and with a strong female voice in everything we make." Fleabag is the living embodiment of this manifesto, the standard-bearer for whatever else is to come from this exciting company. Neither DryWrite nor Waller-Bridge need to hear this from me, but I think that I should confess it to you. The hype is deserved. If you can, find a ticket, somehow. Because Fleabag is daring, vital, important, and devastatingly good.

Showing until May 25th. Book Tickets Here.

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