Following last year’s acclaimed work, F**king Legend writer and performer Olly Hawes makes a return to Riverside Studios this winter with Old Fat F**k Up – a darkly funny, part autobiographical exploration of masculinity, fatherhood and arriving at the brittle edges of middle age with dreams unfulfilled.
At its core, the one man story follows an exhausted father, buckling under financial and societal pressure and living with his partner and two kids in a cramped ex-council maisonette. Told with both humour and tenderness, but shot through a grim, unflinching streak of something raw and unsettling, the play culminates in a shattering act of violence against his son that forces brutally honest questions of responsibility and what it means to be a parent – and a man – in the world today.
At once both personal and sharply political, Old Fat F**k Up confronts middle age, parenthood, class and generational divides with wit, rage and honesty. A partly (though certainly not entirely) autobiographical hybrid of storytelling, stand-up and raw confession, which blends fact and fiction, and infused with the darkly fantastical, the show interrogates the pressures that shape male identity, exposing the gap between who men are, who they hoped to be, and who they are told to become.
Overarchingly, the story explores the fragile performance of masculinity – how men present different versions of themselves at home, in the street and in wider culture – and the consequences when that performance collapses.
Olly’s previous show F**king Legend, will also be performed at Riverside Studio for a limited run of four nights.
Old Fat F**k Up will be playing at Riverside Studios between November 5 – December 20. F**king Legend will be playing on Nov 20, 22 and 25, plus December 4. Click here for more information.
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