Following a brief UK tour final yr, Ollie Maddigan’s The Olive Boy shall be heading to Southwark Playhouse for a London run subsequent yr.
First developed on the Camden Fringe in 2021, this deeply private play shall be working at Southwark Playhouse Borough between Januaru 14-31, 2026. The manufacturing is written and carried out by Ollie Maddigan, directed by Scott Le Crass, with extra recorded dialogue by Ronni Ancona.
When Ollie Maddigan was fifteen, his mom died. The Olive Boy is predicated on a real story, one which he has been making an attempt to inform ever since. Written and carried out by Ollie himself, the present blends sharp humour with uncooked honesty to point out how grief actually feels – generally messy, generally humorous and all the time quietly devastating.
The play begins with a sequence of missteps and small heartbreaks that unfold into one thing deeper: an trustworthy, darkly comedian have a look at the absurdity of loss, and the best way adolescence turns grief into efficiency. Transferring between comedy and confession, The Olive Boy captures the contradictions of rising up whereas falling aside – and studying, finally, that love and grief are two sides of the identical story.
After his mom’s loss of life, Ollie is shipped to reside together with his estranged father. At a brand new college, surrounded by strangers, he clings to the odd distractions of adolescence – women, snap streaks, social standing and the naïve hope {that a} first girlfriend would possibly make life really feel regular once more. “The Voice” (performed by Ronni Ancona) is the recorded presence of a therapist – heard all through the play however by no means seen – reflecting the awkward distance he felt in teenage counselling and the broader silence round boys expressing grief.
The title Olive Boy comes from a nickname Ollie’s mum gave him at delivery, a small and affectionate joke that has taken on a brand new weight since her loss of life. The olive additionally turns into a logo for every thing he tries to swallow since her loss of life – the bitterness of loss, the strangeness of rising up and the awkward makes an attempt to get by the following chunk of teenage life. At fifteen, he carries the bravado of a boy pretending he’s tremendous, caught between the silences anticipated of younger males and the halting conversations of remedy. Over time, what was as soon as unmanageable started to settle into the on a regular basis. Grief didn’t disappear, however reshaped itself – turning into a part of the particular person he’s nonetheless studying to be.
Although rooted in Ollie’s personal life, The Olive Boy speaks to one thing wider. Grief, adolescence and the seek for phrases round ache are experiences that contact us all. The play resonates with anybody who has carried loss – or who has ever tried to carry themselves collectively when the world anticipated them to be tremendous. Anchored by humour and honesty, it’s each an intimate portrait of non-public loss and a broader reflection on what it means to develop up within the aftermath of grief, exhibiting how all of us be taught to reside with love and its absence.
Tickets for The Olive Boy can be found right here.
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