With Old Fat F**k Up, playwright and performer Olly Hawes turns the mirror on modern masculinity, fatherhood, and the brittle hope that keeps us going when everything feels on fire. Following the success of his award-nominated F**king Legend, his latest work trades swagger for something sharper — a darkly funny, painfully honest exploration of shame, anger, and tenderness. It’s theatre that flinches but refuses to look away. We caught up with Olly Hawes to talk about the spark behind the show, the fears men don’t admit, and why intimacy might just be the most radical act left.
Your new play Old Fat F**k Up dives headfirst into masculinity, fatherhood, and the pressure cooker of middle age. What was the spark that made you want to write this story now?
Fittingly, it was a moment in a park in Shoreditch! I was with an old friend, she’s a mum, I’m a dad, and we were talking about the challenges of parenthood. Kind of out of nowhere – she said something like ‘This is why I think people find it so easy to be violent towards children’. It stopped me in my tracks. It was a statement that was so loaded. And all of a sudden I started thinking about the link between looking after the next generation on a personal level and a societal level – both such delicate, difficult things to get right. And the show came from there.
I mean, the show has come from lots of things, lots of different sparks – but if I had to pin point one, it would be that moment. My friend doesn’t actually know she inspired me to write the whole thing either – don’t know if she’d even remember saying it if I asked her, but there you go.
I always try to write about the link between the personal and the political, connection what’s most pressing in my life and the big issues in the world
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You describe the show as “darkly funny and deeply personal.” How do you strike that balance between humour and emotional rawness without losing authenticity?
Ha ha! Did I say that? I think that’s actually pithy PR speak! But yes – I agree with the statement. I actually think the two are so closely connected. Who hasn’t cried at a wedding or laughed at a funeral, who hasn’t looked at the state of the world and not been sure whether to laugh or cry – and I think so many people’s lives are becoming more and more like this. There’s more money than there ever has been in our economy, yet our society is almost as unequal as it’s ever been. And that means people are suffering, people are experiencing hardship, and it’s hard to say that we’re going in the right direction. The gall of the elites who have engineered this makes me want to laugh, the fact that the rest of us have allowed it to happen makes me want to cry – and that’s all there in the show.,
The play confronts ideas of shame, anger, and failure – especially through the lens of modern masculinity. What do you think men today are most afraid to admit about themselves?
This is an interesting question – because when I heard it, I didn’t immediately know the answer, but then I realised: the show plays with the truth – I like keeping an audience on their toes in that way. In some ways it’s based on the truth in that it’s based on things that have happened in my life in other ways it’s based on the truth in that it’s based on my greatest fears – this is both a terrifying thing to do, but also pretty cathartic. I suppose one of the questions the show throws up is this: are men inherently violent, or is there something about the way men are raised that makes them so. Nature or nurture?
Old Fat F**k Up ends in an act of violence, but it’s ultimately about love, exhaustion, and trying to be better. What conversations do you hope audiences walk away having after seeing it?
Well I should clarify – it doesn’t end in violence – I really didn’t want that to be the case. It does feature an act of violence, but honestly, I don’t think that’s what people will find challenging about the show – I mean, we’re so desensitised to violence anyway. I have no doubt the show is going to piss some people off because it’s main theme – the impact the dwindling hope we have for a better future has on modern masculinity and the actions of men all around us – is troubling – deeply troubling – and I want to stir up the conversation we’re having around it. It’s definitely going to get under a few people’s skin – but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I’m not here to be right; I’m trying to give shape to a feeling I think most of us have felt, even if we pretend we haven’t. I think people will be talking about men. What are we going to do about all the men? There’s a part of the show I still can’t get through in rehearsals without flinching. I’m still not sure how it’s gonna go down, and that’s what keeps it interesting to me.
You’ve spoken before about being part of a generation that feels stuck – working hard, but always on the edge. How much of that generational frustration found its way into this show?
Quite a lot – because how could it not? But more than anything, this is a human story about the struggle to be a good person, and the struggle to look after the next generation. It’s about men, sure – but also about everyone trying to keep their head above water in a world that feels permanently on fire.
Your previous work, F**king Legend, was a huge success and earned you an Off West End Theatre Award nomination. How does Old Fat F**k Up build on – or break away from – what you explored in that piece?
Legend was chaos – swagger, sweat, and noise. It came out swinging. Old Fat F**k Up still throws a few punches, but they land in quieter places. On the face of it, Legend looks like the wilder show – more sex, more drugs, more mess – but what it really did was clear the ground for this one. It gave me permission to be more emotionally honest and a bit more technically sharp. Legend was about performance; Old Fat F**k Up is about what happens when the performance ends. They talk to each other, but this new one stares longer and doesn’t flinch as much.
You’ve written about stepping back from activism and embracing smaller, more personal storytelling. Has that shift changed the way you see your art’s role in cultural conversations?
Yes. I used to think theatre could change the world – and – like many comrades – whilst I’m not prepared to give up on that as a proposition, I think a more realistic approach to take is; now I think it can change a world – one person’s, for an hour or so. I’ve realised intimacy can be more radical than outrage. When you stop shouting at the system and start whispering to the people inside it, the work becomes riskier and more human. If someone walks out of the show feeling seen, or a bit cracked open, that’s a political act in itself.
You blend theatre, stand-up, and confession into something uniquely your own. Where do you see your work heading next – and what stories are you still hungry to tell?
I have always found that as one project reaches its creative fruition, the ideas for the new project emerge. It was as I was finishing the run of my last show F**king Legend, that the ideas for this show came into being. I love that Old Fat F**k Up is going up alongside F**king Legend at Riverside Studios and people can see them back-to-back. The idea for the next show is, I can feel it, emerging – but honestly the new idea I have scares me – I think it could get me into a lot of trouble, and I’m also aware that it’s so delicate, I’m not sure I want to speak it into existence yet.
xxx
Old Fat F**k
Riverside Studios
from 5th November – 20th December