Fleabag, this year’s breakout TV anti-heroine, is returning to the theatre where she was first introduced in a warts-and-all one-woman show. The writer and performer Phoebe Waller-Bridge is bringing the porn-addicted, conflicted character back to Soho theatre for a two-week run in December.
Waller-Bridge has won huge acclaim for the TV version of Fleabag, which aired first on BBC3 and then moved to BBC2 this summer. The dark comedy series was described as a “really bleak version of Miranda” and “a gloriously rude update of Bridget Jones”.
Soho theatre hosted the first previews of Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag monologue after a successful sketch night of her earlier work. The comic storytelling show then had its Edinburgh festival premiere in 2013, winning a Fringe First award. The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner wrote that it “makes you both laugh and choke at the same time”. The show then had two sold-out Soho theatre runs, with Waller-Bridge picking up further awards for performing and writing the show.
Earlier this year, Waller-Bridge told Soho theatre’s artistic director, Steve Marmion: “It’s impossible to get anything in front of an audience in this city without selling a limb. Soho theatre gave me my acting [Roaring Trade] and my writing debut: the first collection of short plays I ever wrote was put on here and it felt like a really safe place for Fleabag to try out all her inappropriateness.”
The production will be once again directed by her frequent collaborator Vicky Jones, with whom she founded the theatre company DryWrite. It runs from 5 to 16 December.
