Review of F**king Legend at Riverside Studios: Sock Dilemmas, Self-Punishment, and the Sisyphus of Redemption

Rated 🍯🍯🍯

Olly Hawes’ one-man odyssey into the labyrinth of modern masculinity and societal decay is nothing short of a theatrical Molotov cocktail. The performance’s bifurcated structure—beginning with the raucous chaos of a stag do before spiraling into a dystopian nightmare—mirrors the disintegration of personal and societal facades. The show’s success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was hailed as a top 10 show, underscores its cultural relevance and artistic merit.

Riverside Studios’ F**king Legend is the kind of theatrical production that initially seems like an extended fever dream—a 70-minute rant by a confused man ricocheting between hilarity, intensity, and outright absurdity. And yet, long after the curtain falls, it starts to burrow into your mind, like a splinter that refuses to be ignored. What begins as an odd and disjointed experience soon reveals itself as a profound exploration of guilt, redemption, and the absurdity of human existence.

For the bee, this play wasn’t just a theatrical experience; it was an existential provocation. Below, it unpacks the questions, themes, and ideas that made F**king Legend far more than just a bizarre piece of fringe theatre.

Before the bee delves into the rest of the rant, it bears mentioning that a 70-minute rant by a confused guy can toe the line between profound vulnerability and self-indulgent chaos. Perhaps the brilliance lies in its audacity to embrace chaos—but only if the audience emerges with something more than bemusement. The bee did, but the bee is also cognizant that not everyone would. In fact, the bee itself was exasperated at times, and the play is only redeemed by the reflections it provoked long after the curtain fell.

The Sock Dilemma: Absurdity or Insight?

The play opens with the protagonist standing paralyzed before a simple, seemingly trivial decision: which socks to wear. His inner monologue, meanwhile, spirals into a frenzied rant about the state of the world—climate change, war, inequality, capitalism. At first blush, this juxtaposition feels absurd, even comedic. But was there something deeper at play?

Is it possible that his indecision over socks was written as a mirror to humanity’s broader inability to act decisively? Could it be that the same paralysis preventing him from choosing socks is what prevents us, collectively, from addressing the crises that threaten our existence?

Why was he so intent on choosing the “right” socks? Was this his way of asserting agency in an uncontrollable world, of creating order amidst chaos?

Or was the sock dilemma a scapegoat for the kinds of indecisiveness and inaction that have plagued humanity for centuries? Is this paralysis a symptom of privilege, of having too many choices and too little consequence?

The bee doesn’t have the answers, but these questions lingered long after the play ended. Perhaps the absurdity of the sock scene wasn’t meant to mock the protagonist, but to provoke the audience to reflect on the absurdity of their own choices—or lack thereof.

Performative Concern

The protagonist is consumed by guilt, not only over his personal failings but also over his place in a privileged society. He frets over the world’s loftiest problems—climate change, inequality, capitalism. The need to contemplate global crises might not be about solving them at all, but about flagellating himself for his own comfortable place in an uncomfortable world.

This is the crux of the play’s critique: the idea of performative concern. What is it, and why does it matter? Performative concern is when an individual’s engagement with societal problems is not motivated by a desire to create change, but by a need to feel morally righteous or emotionally complex. The concern exists not to benefit others, but to serve the self.

For the protagonist, the very act of thinking about global crises becomes a way to construct a narrative of himself as a “thoughtful” person. It’s not about solving problems; it’s about framing himself as someone who cares. And this caring, this fretting, becomes its own form of moral currency—a way to justify his inaction by proving that he feels appropriately guilty.

The protagonist’s inability to inhabit his own existence is palpable, and it’s a stunning encapsulation of a generation that feels born into debt—environmental, social, economic, spiritual. His compulsive need to “think big thoughts” feels like a moral tax he’s paying for his privilege. And isn’t that a universal feeling for anyone who’s remotely self-aware in the modern world? The more you know, the harder it is to justify your own comfort, let alone your existence.

The bee couldn’t help but wonder: How often do we, too, engage in this kind of performance? How often does our guilt become a self-serving ritual, designed to soothe our conscience rather than drive meaningful change?

The Hollow Theatre of Redemption

The protagonist’s journey is framed as a quest for redemption, though what he seeks to redeem is unclear. Is it his infidelity during the stag do? His inaction and indecisiveness? His privilege? Perhaps it’s all of these—and more.

The bee is reminded of a scene from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In this scene, Lise, consumed by guilt over her perceived meanness, slams her finger in a door “with all her might.” She then sits and stares at the blood and bruising, whispering to herself about how cruel she is.

Lise’s self-punishment is grotesque and hollow, much like the protagonist’s acts of penance in F**king Legend. Both characters intentionally harm themselves, believing that pain will somehow bring them closer to redemption.

Lise’s Motive: Lise’s act of self-punishment is an attempt to embrace the meanness she believes defines her. She’s trying to become the villain she fears she already is, only to punish herself for it. It’s a self-constructed cycle of cruelty and penance that leaves her no closer to redemption or understanding.

The Protagonist’s Motive: The man in the play has a similar but distinct aim. His self-punishment is less about embracing cruelty and more about absolving guilt. He performs acts of penance—returning to the scene of his transgression, putting himself in danger—but these rituals are empty. Like Lise, he seeks redemption through pain, but the pain remains performative, disconnected from any real reckoning.

Both characters are trapped in the same existential bind: they believe that suffering will bring meaning, but their suffering is hollow, a theatre of self-punishment that resolves nothing.

Judgment Without a Judge

What makes the play’s critique so compelling is that the judgment of the protagonist’s failings comes not from an external force, but from within. He is his own judge, jury, and executioner. This self-imposed judgment is what makes his quest for redemption so poignant—and so futile.

The play also hints at a broader moral truth: humanity’s collective failings don’t absolve individual guilt. If anything, they amplify it. The man’s sense of complicity in the world’s problems—climate change, inequality, war—is both validating and crushing. By seeing his personal failings mirrored in humanity’s larger crises, he feels both justified in his guilt and incapable of escaping it.

The Existential Collision of the Macro and Micro

Why does the protagonist conflate his sock choice with the world’s problems? Perhaps because the line between the macro and the micro is blurrier than we’d like to admit. The climate crisis, inequality, capitalism—these are the cumulative result of countless individual choices. And yet, his conflation feels absurd, even narcissistic, as though his personal indecision carries the same weight as global collapse.

But maybe this is the point: the personal is political. The macro is the micro, multiplied by billions. This collision of scales is what makes the play so dizzying—and so relevant.

The Beauty and Futility of Redemption

Ultimately, F**king Legend offers a bleak but oddly beautiful commentary on redemption. The protagonist’s journey is futile, but his yearning to be better is profoundly human. His failures are ours, his paralysis ours, his guilt ours.

The play doesn’t offer answers—it revels in the discomfort of unresolved questions: Is redemption even possible? Does pain have meaning, or is it just pain? Can guilt ever motivate real change, or does it merely perpetuate inaction?

Conclusion: A Bizarre Gift of Provocation

On the surface, F**king Legend may seem like a bizarre piece of theatre—a chaotic rant by a confused man flirting with the boundaries of what could be considered art. But for the bee, the real growth came in the hours that followed, as the play’s questions burrowed deeper and deeper into its mind.

The bee recognizes that not everyone will leave this play with the same takeaways. Theatre is, after all, a deeply subjective experience. But for this bee, the bizarre brilliance of F**king Legend lay in its ability to provoke thought about existence, guilt, redemption, and the absurdity of human life.

Moreover, why can’t the intrepid viewer be the unsung legend of this f**king piece? The spectator’s ability to endure and interpret can sometimes transcend the artist’s confessional catharsis, the bee has come to realize. Despite that one scene in the play when the protagonist yelled and swore at a member of the audience in a way that the bee felt certain would land the theatre company in legal trouble, the bee left the show with…something. Sure, it was strange. But it got the bee thinking. And for that, the play deserves its due.

Three stars!

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Watched November 2024 at Riverside Studios, London