Theatre review: Fleabag’s scandalous success

Suddenly they’re all at it. Actors, that is, writing plays. David Haig, Rory Kinnear and Simon Paisley Day are all poised to offer new dramas to the public. But someone else has got there first. You may have spotted Phoebe Waller-Bridge playing a secretarial cameo in The Iron Lady. She’s a rangy Home Countries brunette with rosy lips, large inviting eyes and an angular, forthright face that suggests intelligence, amusement and a hint of subversive sexual power. Her immaculate skin is as white as a snowdrop. All in all, she’s perfectly set up for a steady career in frocks and pearls playing Downton gold-diggers and hyperventilating Jane Austen virgins.

But she seems to want more, something wilder, something weirder, from her profession. Her début play, a monologue called Fleabag, is a riveting examination of hedonistic excess in the metropolis. She plays a flighty, rootless posh bird who runs a Bohemian café in London with her best friend Boo.