THE ARC'S TAKE

The real argument here is that the stage play and the TV show only look like the same story wearing two outfits, when they're actually two different animals entirely — one built to survive a guinea pig's murder in a way the other never could.

It's not quite "a very special episode," but something about this one feels much more personal, but also there is a Chekhov's Gun dance break so don't take it too seriously, please.

A filmed version of the Fleabag stage play was broadcast by the National Theatre UK and Amazon, but these days you have to search something like "Fleabag National Theatre Live (Phoebe Waller-Bridge 2019)" and read a little bit of very obvious Russian. For instance "Видео" means video.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Before it was a TV show, Fleabag was a one-woman play — and on this episode of The Arc, the hosts dig into why the two are actually different animals, not just different formats of the same story. That means a long, close look at the guinea pig's death, the bank manager framing device, and the character of Boo, plus the real backstory of how Phoebe Waller-Bridge and director Vicky Jones built the show from scratch. If you love Fleabag, or you've just always wondered what got cut for TV, this is the episode.

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New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.

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EDITORIAL OPENER

Fleabag exists in three forms, and this episode is about the friction between two of them: Phoebe Waller-Bridge's original one-woman stage play, where a woman sits in a chair and does not get up, and the BBC television series most people mean when they say the name. We spent this one on the stage show — the raw thing, the version where the guinea pig gets killed by human hands and the BBC would later say, no, that's not television. If you've only seen the show, you may not know Hillary the guinea pig ever died at all. Jaclynn, who watched the play three times from the second row (close enough, she'll tell you, to have reached out and touched Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and who chose those seats specifically to stare the performer down), forgets it happens every single time.

That forgetting turns out to be the whole argument. On stage there's no literal guinea pig — just Fleabag cradling a fistful of air until "the chattering stops, everything is quiet and she is safe" — so the killing stops being about a guinea pig almost immediately and becomes about grief nobody's processing, a friendship that's already dead, the last thing she loved. Cole makes the case that the guinea pig is a Chekhov's gun that has to go off, that in the play everything is dead and dead, and that on television, surrounded by a cafe wall of guinea pig photos, all you'd be left with is she killed an animal with her bare hands. The three of us don't fully agree — there's a running disagreement about whether Boo's death is a death or, as Cole puts it, "literary murder" — and the not-agreeing is the point.

Jaclynn found this whole thing by accident, going down a rabbit hole looking for a different show entirely, and watched season one hundreds of times through two bottles of Prosecco a night before she got sober in 2019 and finally saw the ending clearly; Robby, on record, spends a good stretch of this episode being deeply uncomfortable, which he insists is great. You don't need to have seen the play — you almost certainly haven't; it's the version that got mislabeled in 2013 as a show about porn's effect on modern women when it's really just a woman living her life, sometimes having sex, mostly grieving. Stay for the part where we forget how it ends, remember we went out afterward and got served ants, and then spend a full minute arguing about whether they were ants or Chipotle-marinated grasshoppers.

CREATIVES

• Phoebe Waller-Bridge — Screenwriter — also: Fleabag (2019), Killing Eve (2018), Crashing (2016)
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge — Producer — also: Fleabag (2019)
• Vicky Jones — Director — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019), Run (2020)
• Tony Grech-Smith — Director — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Megan Ellison — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Sue Naegle — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Dawn Davis — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Skye Optican — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Francesca Moody — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Kevin Emrick — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Isobel Waller-Bridge — Composer/Sound Designer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)

CAST

• Phoebe Waller-Bridge — Fleabag — also: Fleabag (2016), Killing Eve (2018), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

AWARDS

This episode is specifically about the stage play ("Fleabag: The Original Play"), not the TV series — so I'll focus on the play's own awards history, separate from the TV show's Emmy/BAFTA/Golden Globe wins (which belong to the television adaptation, a different work).

Here is the awards history for Fleabag: The Original Play (the stage show):

Awards & Nominations — Fleabag: The Original Play

• Scotsman Fringe First Award — WIN (2013)
• The Stage Award for Best Solo Performer — WIN (2013)
• Off West End Theatre Award ("Offie") for Most Promising New Playwright — WIN (2013)
• Off West End Theatre Award ("Offie") for Best Female Performance — WIN (2013)
• Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright — WIN (2013)
• Susan Smith Blackburn Prize — NOMINATION (Special Commendation)
• Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre — NOMINATION (2014)
• Evening Standard Award for Most Promising New Playwright — NOMINATION (Finalist)
• Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show — WIN (2019, off-Broadway/New York run)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance — NOMINATION (2019)
• Drama League Award, Distinguished Performance Award — WIN (2019)
• Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance — WIN (2019)
• Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress — NOMINATION (2020, for the West End revival at Wyndham's Theatre)

The play won the Scotsman Fringe First Award, was given a special commendation for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2014, plus Best Entertainment or Comedy Play and Best Actress nominations at the 2020 Oliviers, alongside wins for The Stage Best Solo Performer, an Offie for Most Promising New Playwright, an Offie for Best Female Performance, the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show during its 2019 New York run. Waller-Bridge landed a Best Actress nomination for the 2020 Olivier Awards for the show's return to the West End, and the New York transfer also brought nominations/wins including the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, the Drama League's Distinguished Performance Award, the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance, and an Evening Standard Award nomination for Most Promising Playwright.

Note: the play itself was not eligible for and did not receive Academy Award, BAFTA Film, Golden Globe, WGA, or DGA recognition — those bodies honor film/TV, not stage plays. The numerous Emmy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA TV wins associated with "Fleabag" belong to the separate television adaptation, not this original stage production.

FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA

the Kickstarter origins, BBC's refusal of the guinea pig scene, and the Fringe First award/interview details.Here's a set of confirmed, specific production trivia items about Fleabag: The Original Play:

1. The BBC required the guinea pig to survive on TV — unlike the play, where Fleabag kills it. In the original stage version, Fleabag crushes her injured guinea pig Hilary to death by hand after "Tube Rodent" (called "Bus Rodent" in the TV version) kicks it, but when the BBC commissioned the series, one condition was that unlike the original stage play, the series couldn't kill off Hilary the guinea pig at the end, and Waller-Bridge admits this was probably a good call. [Source]
2. The whole show began as a dare, not a planned project. Fleabag began as a dare: in 2012, Phoebe's friend the comedian Deborah Frances-White, now host of the Guilty Feminist podcast, was organising a stand-up night as part of the London Storytelling Festival, and challenged Phoebe to write a 10-minute piece. That kernel later grew into the full stage show. [Source]
3. The production was crowdfunded and the team lived in cramped conditions to bring it to Edinburgh. For the 2013 Fringe run, "We fundraised with a Kickstarter, packed our bags, slept eight people in a two-bed flat and crossed our fingers that people would come to see what we had made," Waller-Bridge later recalled. The Kickstarter campaign itself was launched to raise £3,955 for the production of a Waller-Bridge-led one-woman show directed by Jones and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (https://www.edfringe.com/about-us/news-and-blog/phoebe-waller-bridge-and-fleabag-at-the-fringe-10-years-on/, https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/how-fleabag-got-made-70994/)
4. The job-interview framing device from the play was replaced by a bank-loan interview in the TV show so the failing café could be saved rather than shuttered — the play follows the last three days leading up to the cafe closing, with a framing device of the newly unemployed Fleabag attending a job interview after this has happened, while in the series, the job interview was replaced with the loan application interview, allowing the cafe to be rescued after all, and extended into Series 2, where the cafe has actually become quite successful. [Source]
5. Real guinea pigs were cast for the TV series based on their resemblance to celebrities. For the on-screen adaptation, Waller-Bridge talked about casting real guinea pigs for the TV adaptation of the play, which involved selecting the furry creatures based on their celebrity look-a-likes like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone. [Source]

WHAT THEY DID NEXT

Since Fleabag, Vicky Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge's paths have mostly diverged. Jones wrote and created the HBO series Run (2020), and before that wrote an episode of Killing Eve and script-edited the Fleabag TV adaptation — her most substantial post-Fleabag credit as a solo creator remains Run. Waller-Bridge, meanwhile, has stayed busy on screen and off: she appeared as Helena Shaw in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, released in June 2023, appeared in John Krasinski's fantasy film IF alongside Ryan Reynolds, and is narrating and producing a two-part octopus documentary titled Octopus!, set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video. She's also attached to write and executive produce a Tomb Raider series for Prime Video, though that project has had a bumpy road — she's writing all the episodes, with a co-showrunner and director now brought on to help steer it toward a start of filming.

Given the show's format (one film/work per episode), the most fitting, fully-confirmed standalone title is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Tease line: We haven't covered Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yet — but we probably should.

FAMOUS QUOTES

Based on documented, named-source reviews of the Fleabag stage play, here are confirmed quotes from critics (not the cast/crew):

• "One of the great qualities of the writing in both this play and the subsequent TV series is the way it leads us into laughing at things that are quite shocking or reprehensible and then pulls the rug from under us" — theatre.reviews critic, Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag filmed live on stage – review [Source]

This critic called the play "a master class in constructing and writing a script," noting how it "leads us into laughing at things that are quite shocking or reprehensible and then" pulls back.

• "What centers Waller-Bridge's show is not only her razor-sharp wit, and her gift for narrative and comedic surprise, but also her performance" — Thom Geier, TheWrap [Source]

Thom Geier of TheWrap wrote that "What centers Waller-Bridge's show is not only her razor-sharp wit, and her gift for narrative and comedic surprise, but also her performance."

• "If this Fleabag sometimes feels a little like it's all happening in air quotes, it's still a brisk... clever, and indisputably engaging evening of theater" — Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly [Source]

Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "If this Fleabag sometimes feels a little like it's all happening in air quotes, it's still a brisk (only 65 minutes!), clever, and indisputably engaging evening of theater, performed at a level of intimacy that most Phoebe Waller-Bridge fans - now legion - can only dream of in 2019."

• "In 2016 it was turned into a wildly successful and 'utterly riveting'" TV series — The Guardian, as quoted on Goodreads [Source]

The published edition of the play notes it "In 2016 it was turned into a wildly successful and 'utterly riveting' (Guardian) BBC television series."

EXTERNAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Here are a few resources that go deeper on this specific piece of work — the original one-woman Fleabag stage play and its relationship to the TV series:

1. "Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag(s): direct address and narrative control from stage to small screen" (Journal of International Women's Studies, Bridgewater State University) — this academic essay explores how the TV series owes its mode of direct address to the original one-woman stage monologue, applying auteur theory to the show's use of direct address and its relationship to feminist content. Worth a read for listeners who want a scholarly deep-dive into why the fourth-wall-breaking device works the way it does across both formats.
2. "This Scene in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Original Play Never Made it Into 'Fleabag' (Thankfully)" (Collider) — this essay focuses specifically on the guinea pig's death as "the darkest omission from the one-woman show" and argues that Fleabag's escalating bad acts, including killing a guinea pig, mean she doesn't really earn a traditional happy ending, making it a good companion read to the episode's own extended discussion of that scene.
3. "Fleabag: How The Original Stage Play Is Different To The TV Show (Is It Better?)" (Screen Rant) — this piece walks through the character-by-character differences between play and show, including a detailed look at the Joe character, whom Waller-Bridge describes as "a proper cockney geezer" with a "joy that slaps you in the face," an elderly, loyal cafe customer absent from the TV series, making it a solid companion piece for listeners curious about exactly which elements got cut or redistributed.

RELATED ARC EPISODES

There will Consider starting from the beginning — Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.

SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.