FringeReview UK 2026
The Olive Boy
Free Run Productions, Associate Producer Shoddy Theatre
Genre: Autobiography, Contemporary, Fringe Theatre, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre, True-life
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Little Studio, Borough
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Ollie Maddigan’s own debut play The Olive Boy rollercoasters through 75 minutes, directed by Scott Le Crass, making its return to the Southwark Playhouse Borough’s Little Studio till January 31; after which it tours yet again.
An extremely fine, and important one-person play, brimming with comedic gambits to open the floodgates.
Review
You’re fifteen and the coolest boy you know. But first up there’s a home video, a real one projected of a young woman and her baby. It cuts and Ollie Maddigan sits akimbo, waiting for someone to react, then starts himself. Yet this is about grief. Waking up and finding your mother’s died. Of course you joke till ready. But it’ll catch you all the same. Ollie Maddigan’s own debut play The Olive Boy rollercoasters through 75 minutes, directed by Scott Le Crass, making its return to the Southwark Playhouse Borough’s Little Studio till January 31; after which it tours yet again.
First performed in 2021, when Maddigan was barely 20, it’s garnered an Offie Award for creation, and is autobiographical. It’s clear over nearly five years off and on whilst pursuing other projects, Maddigan’s learned a great deal: it’s there in his magnificent slouch at the audience to begin; the way he plays them, letting them look after jackets, joshing and high-fiving (a bit of a speciality of the Little recently); and his timing. He’s a consummate performer.
Lit by Adam Jeffrey, timing’s synched with glaring light changes when Maddigan’s silhouetted or lit as if in a stadium. It’s in these moments, profiled in dark, that the voice of his pre-recorded therapist (Ronni Ancona) butts in. She punctuates sessions out of time and synch with the abrupt opening Ollie makes. In itself it’s a heady mix of josh and the start of toxic masculinity; and genuine revulsion from that, even at fifteen. So we’re presented with how various groupings of people into acceptable and not are created. Especially Geeky Girl, with Maddigan’s comedically nasty look-away of revulsion. Maddigan forces you into complicit laughter at these inevitable hierarchies and shibboleths, all presented in an artfully-kerned language of demotics and glottals. Maddigan catches the tone and testosterone of young teens roaring into their hormones with all verbs blazing.
The narrative seems linear other than those arc-light interrogations – again a neat touch, the psychology of a fifteen-year-old replicated faithfully. It’s in these sessions though that Ollie’s cockiness is lasered out, the diffidence in facing up to an adult understanding of grief ironically measured out by Ancona’s AI-sounding voice. Maddigan’s Ollie and performative self tells us he’s in a new school and city moving in with a dad he barely knows. It only emerges later when roughly these grief counselling sessions take place. But they puncture the narrative, artfully opening on a braggadocio moment,. One where Maddigan’s fifteen-year-old persona isn’t shy to note his previous school had had him branded as a ‘mummy muncher’ for being seen holding his mother’s hand. Poignant in retrospect.
In a new city though, Ollie’s new cool revolves around pursuing Science Girl without seeming to. And determinedly befriending uber-cool Jake, so they can pursue together. Jake, after a drinking session fades out early and in any case Science Girl takes the initiative. It doesn’t go as planned, not because the girl isn’t interested, but because of two things: young Ollie’s decency in not pursuing her invitation “because I won’t remember anything”, and olives.
That connection’s worth not spoiling. Yet it’s true olives haven’t always been Ollie’s best friend. Not least because he was born green; a story in itself, one which his mother Charlie transforms. She also lies about him at The Phantom of the Opera so he’s whisked backstage and told he’s brave. When it comes to storytelling, it’s clear where Ollie and Maddigan gets it from. And equally his painful, irrational contempt for his real father, and comparative liking for his mother’s fiancé Peter the Pushover. One’s at the Job Centre, the other’s cool. Yet when it comes to an incident of returning to an open door, travelling back, or his father, there’s a symbolic revelation.
Another narrative too after the Science Girl debacle is only rewound later, and the protagonist is a surprise. Neat and not entirely linear faming such a this is straightforward perhaps but it’s classical neat, withholding a piece till it becomes emotionally present. There’s subtlety as well as brio in this debut work. There’s also a final revelation, at which both Maddigan and the audience stare at a final reel with another reveal. I wonder if at this stage the sound (I’m assuming by Le Crass and Maddigan) isn’t necessary. The silence is enough.
The Olive Boy is the work of a gifted writer/actor who knows how to express and plot his own life, and use language in a memorable, teen-kerned manner. He recaptures a life of a decade ago with fidelity and affection. An extremely fine, and important one-person play, brimming with comedic gambits to open the floodgates.
Maddigan breaks out of role after applause to discuss grief, the effect the play has on some audience members, and to keep talking about bereavement. There was on this occasion an informative Q&A of 30 minutes which included his old drama teacher. It’s clear Maddigan is pursuing his double vocation of writer/actor, and is, as other have said, one to watch.
Stage Manager Dani White, Producer Free Run Productions, Associate Producer Shoddy Theatre. PR Gingerbread Agency PR.
