Review: Fan/Girl (Summerhall)

Football-themed age-regression workshop for millennials

They say that millennials are more nostalgic than most generations, but I’m not sure that’s true. Every generation reminisces about how the world used to work, the aesthetics of their youth long forgotten today. Even the youngest generations, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, can be caught reminiscing about trends from just a few months ago since pop culture moves at such a speed that nothing stays popular for long. But for all the millennials who truly want to wallow in Nostalgia, fear not - there is Fan/Girl. Bryony Byrne’s one-woman show takes us back to the 1990s when she was in primary school and loved football: playing it, watching it, and looking up to her spirit guide Eric Cantona, who, with the help of a piece of black tape and a questionable accent, appears before us throughout the performance to give advice.

Photo Credit: Stefan Willhoit

Byrne seems completely at home playing her childhood self, or at least a version of her through her 36-year-old eyes. Her performance has a certain Miranda Hart quality to it, accentuated by her complete readiness to laugh at herself – and with all the audience participation, there is plenty of opportunity. We are given the faces of 90s celebrities to hold up when mentioned, we play football by batting an enormous ball from one side of the audience to the other, and we (badly) help her apply make-up when she starts going to secondary school. Even when the activities don’t directly reference growing up in a British school, the activity and the bonding are enough in themselves to take you back to your school days.

It certainly adds to the performance, but what does it add to the story? Well, nothing. There isn’t much to Byrne’s story of growing up and growing apart. The themes of lost innocence, of gender and how girls are slowly stripped of anything “masculine” that they enjoyed as a child, are present but obvious. For all Byrne’s enthusiasm, Fan/Girl lacks a unique angle, and indeed a satisfying conclusion. There are no great lessons to be taken from the story – not to reconnect with one’s lost passion, no rallying cry to encourage young women in sports. All we get is a shoulder shrug and a silver lining that she gets a lot of the same joys from theatre that she did from football. It leaves you wondering what you were meant to take from the performance, but the answer is simple – to revisit your childhood. The audience participation really is Fan/Girl’s best selling point, and it is executed superbly even if it doesn’t make for a thought-provoking performance. Sometimes, you don’t want to think. Sometimes you just want to sing some hymns and pretend you’re back in a primary school assembly. Three stars.

Whispers from the Crowd: "It was a last minute ticket for me so I didn't know what to expect. It was full of nostalgia, as a guy it was nice seeing football from that perspective. It was quite challenging on the audience, lots of participation. Oh and I loved the 90s bangers."

Fan/Girl will play at 12:10 at Summerhall until August 26th