She’s back – and this time she’s everywhere
As Phoebe Waller-Bridge takes to the stage, self-confessed superfan Claire Cohen says Fleabag fever is everywhere
This is a love story. This is the story of a onewoman show at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe that spawned a hit BBC series, a sold-out play, a jumpsuit craze, 11 Emmy nominations and an eight-way bidding war for a book of the script.
It’s the story of how women like me found themselves queuing online for 55 minutes to buy £60 tickets for a 65-minute show. If they were lucky. Some could only get £150 seats; now, they’re being flogged for £700.
Fleabag opens in the West End on Tuesday and runs for a month – reportedly the last time Phoebe Waller-Bridge will ever perform it.
Things are about to get unbearable. Those of us among the smuggerati – with the hottest ticket in town – will drop it into conversation (“Sure let’s meet, just not next Wednesday, I’m seeing Fleabag!”). Your social media feed will make it feel like everyone you know is sat in the Wyndham’s Theatre.
Felt left out because you weren’t at Glastonbury watching Stormzy? That will be nothing compared with envy over Fleabag, which TV critics variously described as “brilliance slathered on brilliance” and “a minor miracle”. And those weren’t even the most gushing.
As for the stage version, long queues are expected, with 33 £10 tickets available every day. A weekly online lottery will allocate another 50 £15 seats for each performance. If all else fails, there are live cinema screenings on September 12.
In short, despite the series finale having aired on April 8, when
2.5 million of us tuned in, we still haven’t scratched the Fleabag itch. I still quote it with friends. Every time I go to the hairdresser, I threaten to get “the pencil” – the severe, one-sided bob modelled by older sister Claire. My phone automatically hyphenates Waller-Bridge now. When the 34-year-old decided to break the fourth wall and speak directly to viewers, inviting them in, she couldn’t have expected that we’d point blank refuse to get out. Fleabag fever is here to stay. Here are the ways in which it’s taken hold…
Flea-style
Not since “the Rachel” has one haircut been so recognisable. Admittedly, everyone wanted Jennifer Aniston’s long layers in Friends, while almost no one wants Claire’s “pencil”. But the scene in which Fleabag defends her sister by confronting their hairdresser has gifted us one of the show’s most oft-quoted lines – “hair is everything”. It perfectly captures how, despite her life falling apart, the character always manages to look put together. Being a twentysomething owner of a guinea pig café, of course, Fleabag shops on the high street, which helps to explain the mania over her outfits.
After the final episode, in which she wears a short red frock, searches for “red dress” went up 38 per cent. But that’s nothing compared with the lust for the black jumpsuit Fleabag is wearing when she first meets her “hot priest,” played by Andrew Scott.
The £38 garment, by London brand Love, has sold out multiple times and despite having a keyhole front, meaning you’d have to do without a bra, an entire generation of women is learning to tape their boobs. I’m still weighing up whether to buy it. Am I too late? Will everyone else be wearing it? We might not have Fleabag’s wit, but by God we can have her wardrobe.
Screen and stage
Just as Bridget Jones became a by-word for any story about a single career woman in her thirties who enjoyed drinking and wearing enormous pants, Fleabag is now synonymous with any funny show written by a woman.
This Way Up, Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan’s new Channel 4 sitcom, is “the new Fleabag”. Animals, the film about female friendship based on a novel by Emma Jane Unsworth, is “the new Fleabag”. BBC dark comedy Back to Life was “the new Fleabag”. This article might be the new Fleabag. Numerous female comics at the Edinburgh Festival have taken to social media to plead with critics not to write that their shows are “filling a Fleabag hole”. Just because it has a living, breathing human woman in it does not render it “the new Fleabag”.
As author Aaron Gillies put it on Twitter: “Just seen a reviewer describe a woman sat on a bench as ‘the new Fleabag’. Now they’re calling a woman in a coffee shop ‘the new Fleabag’. Now they’re just screaming ‘NEW FLEABAG’ at women on buses”.
Social scene
It started with gin in a tin. After the priest and Fleabag were shown cracking into a couple of cans from his secret stash, M&S reported a 24 per cent rise in sales of the pre-mixed drink – an effect even greater than that of Diane Abbott who, after being pictured quenching her thirst with the store’s Mojito tinny, saw several stores sell out. Next came Chatty Cafés, which predate Fleabag but were given a serious boost when WallerBridge’s character instigated “Chatty Wednesdays” as a way to save her failing business. “Loneliness pays,” she joked – and with 60-plus new cafés signing up to the scheme in the wake of the episode finale, that’s hard to argue with.
In America, as ever, they’ve taken it one step further. This week, in LA, an actual Hilary’s Café pop-up opened courtesy of Amazon. Hundreds of actual women drank coffee and posed with actual rodents, writing things like “THE BEST EXPERIENCE EVER” and “I’M LOSING MY MIND” online. Indeed.
With sex and love at the heart of the show, the dating landscape has also been changed. Friends report numerous men leading their online profiles with “just a hot priest looking for his Fleabag”. Swipe right.
Religious experiences
… and I don’t mean the fact that searches for “priest” on pornographic websites increased by 103 per cent immediately after the series two premiere (and, inexplicably, 145 per cent for “nuns”).
Waller-Bridge’s depiction of Catholicism divided opinion, but many within the faith felt it was a refreshing take on modern religion. “Although I have never met a priest who swears like that,” said former Catholic Herald editor Catherine Pepinster.
Some have reported, anecdotally, a rise in church attendance since the series ended. Certainly, there was increased interest in Quaker meetings, after Fleabag attended one. The Quakers in Britain group cleverly posted her summary on social media (“It’s very intense. It’s very quiet. It’s very… very… erotic”), subsequently reporting that their “account lit up”, with people asking for details of local meetings.
There have also been unconfirmed reports of a “Hot Priests 2020” calendar in the works. Hold on to your vestments.