This poignant monologue exploring loss and grief doesn’t always trust its audience – but earns them anyway
A one-man show lives and dies by how well its main character connects with the audience. In The Olive Boy, writer and performer Ollie Maddigan plays his 15-year-old self, grappling with his mother’s death, adjusting to a new school, and living with a father he barely knows. Maddigan sketches a well-observed portrait of a noughties teen: an explosion of bravado and insecurity that is, at times, quite annoying. The Olive Boy is most emotionally resonant when this mask slips, landing genuine gut punches of emotion. Too often, however, the audience is not trusted to engage fully that authenticity, with scenes that feel heavy-handed or overwritten.
Ollie processes his grief like most teenagers would: badly. Projecting all hope of future happiness into getting with a “hot girl”, Maddigan captures a very particular state-school millennial teenage mentality. There is more than a hint of The Inbetweeners in this portrayal, including a revolting house party vomiting incident. Ollie’s faux-masculinity and desperate need to seem cool, alongside the crudeness of his humour, can make him a frustrating person to spend time with, but the script successfully morphs this into genuine pathos by the show’s conclusion.
At times, though, this transformation is too spelled-out, as if Maddigan doesn’t trust the audience to feel the “right” emotion. A disembodied therapist’s voice (Ronnie Ancona) breaks up several scenes, never appearing onstage, which reinforces the distance between a grieving teenager and the professional trying to help him. That idea is undermined by sound distortion that underlines emotion the audience can already grasp, insisting rather than allowing the feeling to emerge naturally.
This is frustrating, because Maddigan’s writing and acting can deliver organic moments that hit hard. A father-son argument stokes ominous tension as Ollie edges closer to outburst, while a rejection from his former stepfather is heart-wrenching. Smart lighting and sound design capture the discordance of Ollie’s emotions throughout the narrative, moving cleanly between locations and timeframes without being distracting. The Olive Boy is also at its funniest in these more authentic-feeling moments, with its biggest laughs coming from the sarcastic throwaways Ollie uses to defuse tension.
For all its lack of subtlety, the show succeeds through its charisma. Maddigan delivers a dynamic, active performance that commands the stage. Whether whispering an embarrassing nickname to an audience member or high-fiving the front row to celebrate securing a date, everyone is dragged into Ollie’s story. The titular olives become a recurring symbol: a loving mother-son nickname; a snack between shots at a drug-infused house party; and the distended skin of a newly discovered corpse.
The Olive Boy is bookended by real home-video footage of Maddigan and his mother, with both performer and audience visibly moved. A rapturous standing ovation, with more than a few tears being wiped away, makes the show’s impact clear. Yet some scenes lack trust in the audience, feeling overwritten and insistently on-the-nose. As Maddigan’s debut it is very impressive, but The Olive Boy has more to give.
The Olive Boy plays at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 31st January, with Tuesday and Saturday matinees. Tickets can be purchased here.