NT Live: Fleabag: Film Review

NT Live: Fleabag: Film Review

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag show rises and falls a little on how much you know of the TV version.

With the first series essentially being a fleshed out version of the stage play, some of the emotional beats are anticipated and expected.

However, that's not to detract in any shape or form from Waller-Bridge's mesmerising turn on a stage that's essentially just lights and and a chair.

Stripped back to basics, and with occasional voiceover coming from pre-records, it's Waller-Bridge whose subtle shifting of facials and delivery keep you relatively riveted through some of the smut and salaciousness of Fleabag's escapades.

It's not an intensely physical show, but it is one which shifts on a dime, and turns into more emotionally devastating territory without much warning.

While the basic show delivery means there is nowhere to go but to watch Waller-Bridge, she does more than enough to keep you in her thrall for 90 minutes.

Fleabag's NT Live show won't be for everyone - the mix of content and tone means occasionally it veers dangerously close to the crass to bear, but given its effect and penchant for shocking, that's totally tonally in-keeping with the TV version's edges.

It may have originated with the stage show, and then garnered wider-appeal thanks to the fourth wall-breaking ways of its lead actress, but NT Live Fleabag demonstrates the simple power of a monologue and story delivered with such gusto and conviction by a multi-talented performer.