F**KING LEGEND – Riverside Studios, London

Olly Hawes uses comedy, storytelling and theatre to reveal truths about our world and ourselves in F**KING LEGEND at Riverside Studios.

F**KING LEGEND

What is interesting is that the last two theatre outings I’ve been on a) haven’t been typical theatre and b) have been a reaction to paralysis/burnout about the crises facing our world.  And yet they couldn’t be more different.  The first was participatory installation This Is What Utopia Looks Like, a very meditative and gentle experiment in imagination.  And today I’m going to tell you about F**KING LEGEND, which I would describe as meditative or gentle.  Perhaps clever and self-aware?

F**KING LEGEND is the work of Olly Hawes.  After a run at the Edinburgh Fringe, it’s now on at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.  Format-wise, it straddles stand-up comedy, storytelling and theatre.  Which is to say, Hawes plays on our expectations of stand-up comedy in order to subvert them.  It’s clever in that it allows for both a simple set up (a stage and seats) and a quick rapport with the audience. 

It starts with Hawes setting out his stall as a very self-aware English, middle class, straight, white, cis male. Aware of his own privilege, at least.  As he gets started with a first story, he deliberately blurs the lines between the character in his tale (an English, middle class, straight, white, cis male on a stag do), and his persona as comedian/storyteller.  He pushes the story forward bit by bit, until we’re suddenly in morally grey territory. This continues as he crafts a second tale, which seems separate from the first except until it isn’t. A man, again very privileged, seeks an adrenaline thrill away from his safe and comfortable life. In a bleak future, that means seeking out the have-nots, seeing the fences and defences from the other side. When a genuine human connection shakes him out of his cognitive dissonance, where will it end?

What Do We Do About All This Cognitive Dissonance, Then?

A former boss, who I believe I’ve quoted before on the blog, used to say “what’s the ‘so what?'”  Meaning, I get what you’re telling me, but what’s next?  What are you going to do about it?  I found myself wondering that as I watched F**KING LEGEND.  Other than instilling a feeling of unease at our individual and collective lack of action and the cognitive dissonance that sustains it, what’s the ‘so what?’ from all this?  Is writing this work enough of a climate action?  Is watching it going to make me more likely to do something?  But then again, did This Is What Utopia Looks Like, in the end?

F**KING LEGEND comes from a somewhat more cynical place.  Can you tell?  But for all that it’s a refreshingly likeable work.  Hawes has a talent for writing and a natural comedic stage presence, and there is just enough levity that we don’t all go home depressed at the prospect of imminent refugee crises.  Whether one or the other of these not-quite-theatrical works spurs the action they seem to seek remains to be seen.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

F**KING LEGEND on until 21 December 2024.  More info and tickets here.