Anna Burnside reviews an anticipated production that asks questions but doesn’t give many answers.
How do the daughters of high-achieving feminists make their mothers proud? They have rights, hard-won over generations, and role models galore. So why, we can almost hear ROLEPLAY’s protagonist Danni’s mother wailing, do you want to get your tits out on the internet?
Danni - writer and solo performer Hannah Reilly - thrusts and slut-drops onto the stage in a performance of old school bump and grind. She has her bra off within the first few minutes. Yet she is, by her own account, a needy little girl scout who needs a pat on the head, a romantic who is thrilled to have found a guy who looks like a young Hugh Grant and loves ket.
When a big podcast player promises to turn her side hustle into the next big thing, Danni reinvents herself as an Only Fans Carrie Bradshaw, only without friends who have her back. And Hugh Grant turns out to be a bad ‘un, in a thinly developed late plot twist.
Reilly throws everything at the performance, moving between microphones to be everyone from her mother to a dungeon master, making her costume changes part of the show. Some of it, she tells us at the start, is true, so there’s personal investment in there.
But the volume, and the stakes, are so high that any chance of nuance is blurred, then lost.
This much anticipated production, from Fleabag and Baby Reindeer producer Francesca Moody, asks some big questions. Answers? Not so much.
ROLEPLAY performs at Summerhall (TechCube 0) at 17:50 (70 min) until 31 August 2026 (not 18th or 25th). For further details, go to the company’s website.
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