ajhlovestheatre

ROWLING IN IT

written and performed by Laura Kay Bailey 

directed by Dominic Shaw

Kings Head Theatre, London – until 18 April 2026

running time: 1 hour no interval

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/rowling-in-it-zwy4

Anybody intrigued by the wittily punning title of Rowling In It who pitches up to the Kings Head expecting a coruscating comic takedown of the divisive J K whose views on transgender people has been the source of much consternation and impassioned discussion over much of the last decade, is in for a bit of a surprise. Laura Kay Bailey’s self-penned solo show, running at barely an hour, is a semi-fictionalised account of what happens when a jobbing actress accepts the challenge of playing J K Rowling in a potentially provocative Edinburgh Fringe play, but it’s more contemplative than savage. The script’s attempts at being even-handed in terms of considering different sides of an argument are commendable but make for rather unsatisfying theatre, at least as handled here.

Bailey plays the American actress (is this a version of herself?) embroiled in the self-flagellation and soul-searching, as well as the inevitable trial by social media, after being cast as the controversial writer. She also plays everyone else, and it’s here that Dominic Shaw’s tension-free production encounters one of its biggest problems. Bearing a passing physical resemblance to Broadway and US TV star Laura Benanti, Bailey is an engaging, elegant presence, but she doesn’t, at least as yet, have the chameleonic elan to convincingly transform herself into a myriad of characters, including a gross director, a monstrously self-indulgent writer or a sensitive fellow actor struggling with the show’s messy creative processes. 

Accordingly, the switches between characters sometimes feel fudged and confusing, not helped by Bailey’s grasp on different accents (Scottish, posh English, and so on) isn’t as secure as it might be. This lends Shaw’s staging an unhelpful underrehearsed quality, and the comedy frequently fails to land. Bailey tends to deliver bulky swathes of text towards the floor as though locking eyes with an audience member might put her off her stroke. 

It’s a fun touch naming the cast and creatives of the play being produced after Harry Potter characters. So, the clueless, drawling American writer is Snape, the enthusiastic young actress cast as Emma Watson is Hermione, a non-binary performer whose role is cut to ribbons during the rehearsal process is Minerva McGonagall, the ghastly producer is Hagrid…you get the idea. 

The lack of background information on the principal character is frustrating. We find out that she’s originally Texan, that she has a racist grandma who she adores while acknowledging she wishes she wasn’t so racist (like, duh!) and that she has two children. That last tranche of information feels barely relevant, except to justify the borrowing from Jonathan Spector’s masterly 2018 play Eureka Day of the device of having a school parents association’s increasingly tetchy online group chat beamed on to the back wall of the set. It’s quite funny but what has it got to do with being hauled over the coals for playing J K Rowling. This, and the reveal that she had a miscarriage prior to starting rehearsals, make Rowling In It feel like a fragment of a longer, more broadly focussed play.

Another symptom of this is the inclusion of an unseen character, one Mr V, who keeps phoning and with whom our heroine seems to be in a relationship but about who we find out almost nothing so these moments come across as so much dead air. There’s a lame running joke, mercifully abandoned quite quickly, about her not being able to remember where he’s working but only that it begins with the letter L (Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Libya…). 

Pondering that Rowling started attacking trans folks online while menopausal isn’t original or revelatory, and neither does the acknowledgement that such blinkered views can do considerable damage when expressed by somebody with a vast global platform, but that’s about as edgy as this show gets. Bailey seems so determined not to offend anybody at all that the piece has almost no bite or colour. It’s pretty funny though when it depicts a disastrous opening night where a leading performer can’t find their lift while trying to deliver a dynamic, pivotal speech. More of this kind of “when theatre goes wrong” humour wouldn’t go amiss.

A critic accuses Snape’s Edinburgh play of being flavourless but unfortunately that is a description that also applies to Rowling In It, despite Bailey’s hard work. The ultimate punchline, such as it is, involves Bailey telling her agent that she doesn’t think this should be a one woman show. Unfortunately I’m not sure I do either.