Simon Ward reviews Old Fat F**k Up at the Riverside Studios

Olly Hawes has set up camp at the Riverside Studios – as well as this show, in a week or so, he will be alternating performances with his previous play F**king Legend so he must be doing something right. Unfortunately, on the evidence of what I witnessed last night, his is not a message that really resonates with me. It is a one man show, delivered in a style that he insists we must not think of as stand-up comedy. Nevertheless, he paces up and down with a microphone in front of a audience ranged on either side. He alternates between using the microphone and not, sometimes to represent other voices, like his children’s and sometimes seemingly taking us into his confidence, although you can never be sure. It should also be said that he is wearing a blood-stained sweatshirt and trousers with blood up to his elbows.

Although Hawes is at pains to say that this is not really his story, it seems clear that there is a lot of overlap between the life he is describing and his own. This makes for uncomfortable viewing at times. There are undoubtedly funny moments but the underlying tone is melancholic, even depressive. His stage presence veers between approachably confessional and aggressively confrontational. As an audience we are never quite sure what is expected of us. At times it even feels inappropriate to be present at all. Perhaps in an attempt to address this, Hawes does try and give the narrative an episodic structure which he says is based on the Netflix series which he knows will never be made, but which might finally lift him out of his malaise.

There are a number of themes running through the show, one being Hawes’s frustration at the meanness of the life he can afford as a theatre-maker, and the fact that he is, and will always be, less well-off than his own parents. He is full of shame that his children’s childhood is less rich than his own was. He is terrified at the prospect of bringing up a third child – his wife is heavily pregnant. Indeed, he needs to borrow more money from his parents even to stay in their tiny flat. This frustration and anger builds up until there is a terrible moment of violence against his son – what the son has done is never explained, and seems to hardly matter, the point is the outpouring of pent-up rage against the child he loves. His shame is overwhelming, yet life goes on, and the son still has to cling to him for comfort.

There is a bizarre rug-pulling moment towards the end of the show which left me perplexed. Maybe the confessional tone was getting too much and an injection of mayhem was required. It is a strange, unsettling piece of work, never boring, but never quite fully hitting its stride. The explanation for the bloodstains, for example, when it comes, is disturbing but it somehow fails to move. The show ends as it began with Hawes in his little unsatisfactory flat – we are not sure that anything has been learned.

Old Fat F**k Up is running at the Riverside Studios, 101 Queen Caroline Street, London W6 9BN until Saturday 20th December