“Is ‘Fleabag’ a feminist action? Absolutely” “People immediately assume it’s you”, says Phoebe Waller-Bridge when I ask about the challenges of performing her own writing. “We had that conversation early on – it’s just a badge I’ll have to wear.” It’s one that many would shrink away from; Fleabag, developed with the other half of Drywrite, director Vicky Jones, includes snort-out-loud graphic accounts of drunken hookups, all-night wank sessions and an unspeakable act performed on a hamster. One of the most talked about shows of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Drywrite’s touchingly funny one-woman piece about a self-obsessed, sex-obsessed twenty-something has garnered multiple awards and recently transferred to London’s Soho Theatre. Played by Waller-Bridge, the titular Fleabag began as “someone that was quite close to us and the women we know”, Jones explains, “but increasingly became someone further away from us – a slightly younger generation and a product of her environment, of the media and porn industry influence that she’d grown up with”. It’s certainly difficult to match up the two clean-cut, professional sounding women sitting across the table with the frank filth spewed onstage, as we chat politely over cappuccinos in a private members’ club in Soho. Every...

Mark Ravenhill Exeunt ‘ It’s a beautiful city,’ says Mark Ravenhill in the Abattoir Bar, the performers’ lounge of the Underbelly in Edinburgh that makes the pop-up punters’ bars dotted about the place look downright dingy. Like everything at the venue the name is obviously cow-themed, but it also feels appropriate: whether he likes it or not, Ravenhill’s name remains ‘edgy’ in the popular imagination, a by-word for violence and the grim sexual satire of his early plays, so people are often surprised to meet the softly spoken, affable raconteur in the flesh. You might be forgiven for thinking Ravenhill’s gone soft in his later career; his Fringe show Tell Me the Truth About Love is an evening of cabaret numbers written by Ravenhill and his collaborator Connor Mitchell, alongside a song cycle by Auden and Britten. It’s a sentimental and gently amusing piece sung by Jamie Mcdermott with a pianist. As we talk, however, and Ravenhill makes his way through an impressive burger, it’s clear he’s lost none of his bite; the playwright speaks candidly about art, politics and his upcoming show for the RSC, a response to Voltaire’s novella Candide. When we last met a few months...