A One-Woman Show for Rodent Haters and Trauma Dumpers

Warning: this essay is full of spoilers.

In 2016 Phoebe Waller Bridge released the raunchy tragi-comedy fleabag which touched our heart and inappropriately groped our nether regions. By now it is well known that Fleabag was not ejaculated into existence on screen but actually began as a one-woman show which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013. While much of the first season is a direct translation from the stage, there are several big differences—and one the size of a quivering rodent (more on that later). 

The television adaptation is characterized by its fourth wall breaks, but on stage where the fourth wall is much closer to a dressing room privacy curtain, the nods to the audience have a different feel. The stage performance is half monologue delivered to the audience and half dialogue between Fleabag and various characters, almost all acted out by Waller-Bridge. While watching her act out conversations, we are reminded that this is one side of a story. It also allows us to assimilate Fleabag and the other characters more easily than in the television show. When Fleabag describes her sister, Claire, almost as a foil to herself – “she got all of Mum’s good bits” – we see both characters' words come from the same mouth. In this way, we are told to note the differences while being shown the similarities. This push and pull of closeness and distance characterizes both the stage and television show. 

While every character is acted out by Waller-Bridge, there is one exception: Bank Manager or “Male Voice” if you’re reading the script. His dialogue is delivered from a recording which Fleabag speaks to over the heads of the audience. The Dialogue in this opening scene of is identical for both versions

Fleabag: Perv.

Male Voice: Slut.

Fleabag: Wow.

Male Voice: Please leave.

In the series, after Bank Manager asks Fleabag to leave and then she asks him to leave, he is not heard from again (until episode four at the collision of a court ordered sexual harassment course and a women's silent retreat, which is very funny but beside the point). At first it seems that the stage performance is the same: the scene ends, the show continues and this opening interaction is simply the first of many cringe-worthy vignettes. It is not until after the squirming climax of the play (almost there I promise) that we realize that Fleabag has not left the bank, as we were led to believe. Instead, she has been recalling her prior weeks depicted in the rest of the play. This flashback/reality separation is the obvious explanation for why Waller-Bridge doesn’t embody the Bank Manager character. However, this may not be the only reason. This separation may be one more example of the struggle between closeness and distance. 

Fleabag and Bank Manager are more similar than the other characters in the play as they are both troubled people battling their sexual urges and the tendency to lash out. Because of this, it might seem odd for him to be the only “other” in the play. However, having him be separate from her may ironically allow Fleabag to see the parts of herself in him. As Bank Manager shares his shameful story, Fleabag can observe herself, hate herself, and then finally accept herself which she had been unable to do until this point.

Fleabag: Why did you do it?

Male Voice: It was a terrible… mistake.

Fleabag: People make mistakes

Male Voice: Yes they do.

Fleabag: That’s why they put rubbers on the ends of pencils.

When you hate yourself so much, it can be hard to realize that–despite your innumerable fuckups–you are still a person deserving of love and acceptance and change. Fleabag needed to tell someone else before she could hear it for herself. Rubbers on pencils and all that.

Okay, so hopefully you saw the play or watched the show and get that this amazing line is a callback and also is a beautiful transition by me (break for applause) to the other major difference between the stage play and the series: Hillary the Guinea Pig. In the series, we quickly learn Hillary’s tale: Fleabag gave Hillary to her best friend Boo as a last minute birthday gift and after Boo’s death, Hillary became Fleabag’s. She is also the reason for the Guinea-pig themed Cafe and the story about the boy who put pencils up hamster butts. 

After Boo’s death, Hillary becomes Fleabag’s and serves as her remaining connection to boo and also a shameful reminder that (by sleeping with Boo’s boyfriend) Fleabag indirectly caused Boo’s su-ish-cide. So, Hillary in this way embodies Fleabag's struggle between forgetting and remembering—closeness and distance. In the television series, Hillary is less of a character and more of a quirky detail adding to the layered horror and humor of the show. However, in the stage production Hillary is the central character in the play’s climax. After Fleabag has disappointing, dissociative sex with the man from the subway (Tube Rodent), he mistakes Hillary for a rat and kicks her across the room. Twice. Hillary is badly injured and Fleabag ends up putting her out of her misery by squeezing her to death. 

This does not make it into the tv show. BUT HOW COME (jk). I am sure the TV execs pretty firmly vetoed that one for fear that it would scar the terminally underage guinea pigs watching at home. While still jarring on stage, the fact that we don’t see this happen makes it paradoxically more tolerable and more emotional. Like the famous Psycho cut away, we are left to imagine and emote without being caught up in the gore of it. And while they could have done a cut away, they chose not to. My theory is that because in a stage performance, the only thing to look at is our narrator so we are forced to focus on her expressions and emotions and consider the narrative significance.

Fleabag kills her only connection to Boo, but does so out of a desire to stop hillery’s pain. She is finally making the choice to embrace her shame and hurt, to even amplify it. The fact that Hillary was first injured by Tube Rodent who by the way has a rat phobia (ridiculous) and that it happened because Fleabag uses sex to avoid her grief, only compounds her self loathing further. She killed Boo indirectly with sex, and now, indirectly with sex, she killed her remaining connection to her. 

While the differences between the play and the series are narratively significant, they are changes that serve the purpose of maintaining the complex feelings of breakdown. In the one woman show, the format itself embodies the feeling of isolation, selfishness, and performance. In the series this is described with fourth wall breaks and the absence of others like Fleabag, now that her mom and Boo are gone. While Hillary stays alive to see season two, we follow Fleabag’s guilt through montage and flashbacks which are suited to the film medium. Not only is it two perfect pieces of media (not biased), it is a feat of translation and structural changes that keep the core of the story intact.