Euan Munro, Playback (Fringe Review) 5 Stars *****

Five stars

At once naive and knowing, considered and raw, Playback is a comedy dark as a webcam’s lifeless lens. It introduces us to writer-performer Euan Munro’s 11-year-old self, as he pursues and suddenly achieves YouTube fame and all its unintended consequences. 

Real excerpts of Euan’s childhood YouTube videos are projected onto a screen behind the stage, but he leaps off the screen through grown-up Munro’s superb acting performance. The illusion materialises through costume and set design authentic to a teenage boy, down to the basketball snapback and the ever-present half-eaten cereal bowl.

It is an unbridled joy to watch Munro embody his inner child, indistinguishably replicating the disarmingly funny, earnest, and irrepressibly praise-seeking boy we see in the clips. To witness him respond to troll comments with a genuine ‘have a lovely day :-3’ is only to fear for what life has in store for him more keenly. 

In fact Euan’s unguarded optimism is constantly juxtaposed with the audience’s more shrewd suspicions, underpinning even the show’s most light-hearted moments with an electrifying tension. When adult viewers claim to be such keen fans of Euan’s school-boy comedy that they want to send him money, we hear alarm bells ring, but to Euan this can only sound like the jingle of easy money – ‘how much is the Lego millennium falcon?’

Euan’s beautifully drawn character – who, as the show progresses, ages to 14 and then into his 20s – brings the moral of Playback to bear: that, for those forced to confront the adult world far too young, growing up just means becoming ‘older than we know how’ to be. 

And when adult Euan gives the show’s closing address by livestreaming his present-day self onto the screen, it all comes together.  For the camera catches its own footage on the screen, displaying a feedback loop of Euans nestled in the top-left corner of each frame, growing smaller and more faded each time but never quite vanishing. A perfect visual metaphor for the child still lingering within Munro, the enduring impact of his experiences, and, ultimately, the lasting impression the show leaves on the viewer.

Playback, Former Womens Locker Room, Summerhall, 7th till 31st August, 1.20pm