Video: In Rehearsals With THE OLIVE BOY at Southwark Playhouse

Director, Scott Le Crass, and Writer and Performer, Ollie Maddigan, took a break from rehearsals for The Olive Boy to share some insights into the process of creating and developing the darkly funny and deeply heartfelt play. Check out the video here!

When Ollie Maddigan was fifteen, his mother died. The Olive Boy is based on a true story, one that he has been trying to tell ever since. Written and performed by Maddigan himself, the show blends sharp humour with raw honesty to show how grief really feels - sometimes messy, sometimes funny and always quietly devastating.

After his mother's death, Ollie is sent to live with his estranged father. At a new school, surrounded by strangers, he clings to the ordinary distractions of adolescence - girls, snap streaks, social status and the naïve hope that a first girlfriend might make life feel normal again. “The Voice” (played by Ronni Ancona) is the recorded presence of a therapist - heard throughout the play but never seen - reflecting the awkward distance he felt in teenage counselling and the wider silence around boys expressing grief.

The title Olive Boy comes from a nickname Ollie's mum gave him at birth, a small and affectionate joke that has taken on a new weight since her death. The olive also becomes a symbol for everything Maddigan tries to swallow since her death - the bitterness of loss, the strangeness of growing up and the awkward attempts to get through the next bite of teenage life. At fifteen, he carries the bravado of a boy pretending he's fine, caught between the silences expected of young men and the halting conversations of therapy. Over time, what was once unmanageable began to settle into the everyday. Grief did not disappear, but reshaped itself - becoming part of the person he is still learning to be.

First developed at the Camden Fringe in 2021, The Olive Boy has grown over several years. It went on to a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022, followed by a short UK tour in 2024 that earned an Offie Award for Creation. This new season at Southwark Playhouse marks the production's first dedicated London run.