Fleabag navigates being a girl
says being good mates means they can cut to the chase of the play quicker, ‘‘we know each other so well that we can sort of shorthand things’’.
The pair were ‘‘kind of friends’’ until they both ended up in temping jobs and simultaneously had ‘‘life dramas’’.
‘‘We would Facebook chat for ages and we became so reliant on each other. Like if she had to go out I’d be like ‘please come back soon!’.’’
They started calling each other Fleabag’s life are heard and not seen and those voices came from an open audition held by O’carroll and Hambleton. O’carroll says it’s a cool way of engaging people in the process and it also gives Hambleton’s dad his big stage debut as Fleabag’s dad.
‘‘He made some pretty amazing dad jokes about it and, yeah, he’s just a hilarious human being.’’
There was a slight moment of panic for O’carroll when she realised she had sent Hambleton’s dad the whole script.
‘‘I thought ‘oh no’ because it’s so filthy and he might go ‘why is my daughter doing this smutty play?’ but no, he was cool.’’
A Fleabag mood board is spread over the wall of Centrepoint’s rehearsal room. It’s fittingly bright and brash and reflects the step beyond quirky cafe where Fleabag works. It’s guinea pig themed. Yip, you read that right and it’s worth repeating, guinea pig themed. Hampleton says it’s as ‘‘random, weird, amazing’’ as it gets and O’carroll says designer Daniel Williams has had a ball creating Fleabag’s world.
‘‘There will be caging and a London flat vibe. So there will be a little swing and she can run around like a little guinea pig and have a playground basically. So it’s her flat but it’s also a microcosm of the whole London scene.’’
In a shaking-the-snow-globe kind of way Fleabag does something more than tell a real life story, it’s a play that shouts from the top of its voice while dancing on a bar. And it’s about a generation that’s happening now. A generation of women that are fine with being faulted and are fighting and biting and superhero kapow punching back in the face of it all.
Fleabag opens at Palmerston North’s Centrepoint Theatre on September 2 and runs until October 1.