Part of Riverside Studios’s Bitesize Festival, then off to the Edinburgh Fringe, Fuckboy is a solo show from Freddie Haberfellner (he/him).
It explores gender dysphoria, bodily autonomy, and celebrity crushes from a trans perspective.
This is Frankie’s story, or several interlocking stories, as they travel along the District line from Aldgate East home to Richmond. They are drunk and have a pair of scissors in their pocket.
Haberfellner is an Austrian-born performer: he’s made up with glittery eyelids and lips, wearing fishnets, a green jacket, and a black clothing combo.
He’s a very open performer, including the audience in his show (especially utilising one selected member of the audience to represent the fantasy of a celebrity crush on Andrew Garfield – reader, that audience member was me).
The show, which took place in the venue’s intimate River Room, with the outdoor light adding a certain something to this nighttime tale, heads back in time to Frankie’s awful time in a club, and forward to their current self in therapy.
It’s a difficult proposition to make this work in one 50-minute show, as there is a lot to unpick and considerable changes of tone between the scenes.
Isobel Jacob’s direction offers Haberfellner a sense of freedom to explore and share this difficult play, giving space and time for external and internal observation.
Frankie feels uncomfortable with their body, specifically their long curly hair and ‘boobs’. Never a tomboy, more a ‘twink with tits’, they cannot connect with the body that suggests them as female.
The club sequences work well by suggesting isolation from what people perceive to be the norm, while a mismatch between assigned biology and mental identity causes distress.
And that fantasy? Well, we all have crushes, and the subjects might well blush to hear what we think about them, so ‘Andrew Garfield’ and Frankie’s passion for him isn’t much of a stretch, and offers some amusement.
Even that has a point, though. ‘Andrew’ stands for more than just a moment of sexy invention.
On the tech side, Marta Miranda (composer) and Gareth Swindail-Parry (sound designer) have created a varied soundscape for Frankie’s adventures, while Rowan West’s lighting design offers changes of tone.
There’s a big future for this show, and I feel very happy to have seen its first steps. Will it become ‘the trans Fleabag? Time will tell. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be.
Fuckboy was part of Bitesize Festival at Riverside Studios. You can see it at the Edinburgh Fringe from 3-10, 12-17, 19-25 Aug.
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Image credit: Charlie M