Bryony Byrne's Fan/Girl gives us a Freaky Cantona Callback

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Monday 31st October 2022

Remember that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker heads into a dark underworld and meets a vision of his nemesis, Darth Vader? Something similar happened to Balls Etc at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

In the bowels of the Gothic pub Banshee Labyrinth I found myself onstage with Eric Cantona, having an alarming flashback to the worst interview I ever did - with Eric Cantona. Although, no, he didn't turn out to be my father.

Bryony Byrne's show Fan/Girl does indeed feature an onstage Eric, and a whole lot of other novel happenings: there's more memorable stuff in Byrne's first hour than in a whole 90 minutes of, say, an old 90s Premier League game. Which is what this show is about: Byrne's love of football, at school in the 90s, and why it stopped.

It's an interesting time to explore that subject - Fan/Girl's Edinburgh run came right after the Lionesses' seismic success at the Euros - and Byrne also interviewed old contemporaries about why they ditched the game. The end result is an almost Cantona-like mix of inventive joy, with an unpredictable edge (directed by the high priest of high concept shows, Ben Target) although thankfully Byrne's audience interaction involves a lot less high-karate than Eric's.

And it's live! As 90s commentator Martin Tyler would say - there are three London dates for Fan/Girl in mid-November, details below. But let's head back to the training ground.

How did Fan/Girl come about - I imagine it's been in the works for a while?

Yeah, it was quite a long road actually! My partner took me to see Shrewsbury Town vs Charlton, probably in 2018, and it was the first time I'd watched football in decades. I remember being struck by how theatrical it all was and it also reminded me that I'd once been madly into football and I'd forgotten all about it.

I think art can sometimes be a good excuse to reconnect with people so I reached out to some of my old teammates and asked if I could interview them about football. I didn't really know what form it was going to take at that point but it was so interesting to discover that these women, for whom football had been a pivotal part of their lives aged 10, no longer even really thought about it, like me.

Has it evolved a fair bit along the way?

The first iteration of the show was at the Hen & Chickens in 2019 and it was on the hottest day of the year and it was just me doing different football dives and presenting them like art in a gallery, while sweating profusely. Then I did the Soho Comedy Lab and discovered the character of Eric, I got a bit of funding to develop the show from the Arts Council and then the lockdown happened.

So Ben and I worked on it remotely until we were able to get in a room at Poplar Union with some other great people. We did two weeks of R&D and then presented it in two previews. I took some feedback from that and worked on it a bit more, did another preview at the Bread & Roses and took it to Edinburgh.

I was umming and ahhing about taking it to Fringe, it's so expensive to do and I couldn't really afford it but I got lucky because I did Free Fringe and had an old friend who offered me somewhere to stay for free as well.

So you're a kid in St Albans, happily playing football - what happened next?

Well, I think these things are often quieter and more insidious than we realise. I simply moved from primary school to secondary school. I went to a state-run Catholic girls' school and football was never offered to us.

It wasn't only that school though, it wasn't offered to my friends who went to mixed non-religious schools either. And the thing is, children are learning about the world as they go so they don't often challenge the status quo - they're trying to find out what it is. I think when you're told that football isn't available to you, it doesn't take long to accept that as normal and it's only looking back as an adult that you wonder why that was the case.

I met so many women after my show who told me that they hadn't even realised they hadn't been allowed to play football at secondary school and it was only watching my show that they'd remembered they used to play it.

What was so special about Eric Cantona, back then? And when did you decide to get him onstage?

Cantona is such an interesting character. There are a couple of things about him in particular that stick out for me: one is his sense of humour - he just loves to disarm people and that's really fun and he's also got an incredibly strong sense of self and an unwavering moral certainty.

He's someone who embodies a lot of the traits commonly associated with masculinity - powerful physicality, anger, hairiness - but he's also poetic and sings to his children at breakfast. He's a character that would perfectly allow young Bryony to express her rage, whilst making subtle points about how we view rage in men and women, and he's eccentric so gives me license to do almost anything onstage.

I can't think of a more interesting person in football, then or since...

He's one of those footballers that has transcended football. We often get a two dimensional representation of who footballers are as people (particularly in the 90s) and his personality is something that has outshone that, in a way that even someone like David Beckham hasn't really done.

Aside from being a fashion icon, we don't really know Beckham's opinions on things but we know what Cantona thinks. Cantona's also a great choice because he explores theatre and football and the theatricality of football in unique ways - like quoting King Lear at the Champions League draw. I find him fascinating and funny and I just really really wanted to play him onstage.

I was slightly freaked out facing Eric again - did anyone have similarly interesting responses to the show?

I know! I'm so sorry about that. I didn't know you'd had a bit of a traumatic history with him.

A few audience members cried, but I suppose that's not that surprising as I'm telling a story about exclusion from sport based on gender and lots of people have experienced exclusion. I think what did surprise me was how many men were impacted by the show.

I had a few audiences that were only men, or mostly men, sometimes in football shirts, and I didn't know if they were expecting a sort of purist overview of football in the 90s rather than the absurd madcap show about female adolescence that I gave them! They told me they loved it though!

I did also have two dogs in the audience in one show. They were a brilliant addition - dogs famously love footballs.

The very talented Ben Target directed it - what did he bring? Encyclopaedic football knowledge?

Ben brought some weird rules into the room, like you can't turn your back on him as you leave, and he insists on being paid in those solid sugar mice, which are actually quite hard to find these days. Despite this though, he's one of the most generous people I've ever worked with and he brought great patience and kindness to the process.

He's really brilliant at giving space for experimentation whilst simultaneously making sure the whole thing retains a recognisable shape. Ben's sport is really basketball and I think it worked that we were both kind of fumbling around for our memories of football, because the show is so much more rooted in the 'idea' of football than it is in actual current football knowledge.

Were there particular goals for the audience interaction bits, and what were the most memorable examples?

Yes, different audience interactions had different goals. Some, like the football game, were designed to make the room feel like a community and to loosen people up a bit. Others are about making the audience complicit in the action of the story.

I always absolutely love doing the make-up bit because it's just such a joy to do that kind of one-on-one clowning with people. I remember one woman trying to put mascara on me while she was crying with laughter and another man who put foundation straight into my eye.

Without giving any spoilers, obviously the 'painting' moment is always quite memorable for the person doing it. Twice I had people try and paint on my actual body. That bit is designed to highlight the differences in the way we perceive men and women's bodies but mostly it's just dead fun to do.

You also spoke to women about their relationship with football - what sticks out from those interviews now?

The thing that sticks out for me is the joy. Obviously there's a great deal of loss too, as most of them no longer play or watch football, and they all suffered some version of the same story.

But the stories that they had to tell me about when they did play football, before it became a battle for them to do so, were filled with memories about the connections between people, moments they found exhilarating, or that they were proud of, or times when they won, or lost.

Most of the women told me about the other women they played with, or the fathers they watched with and a lot of them made me laugh.

How do you feel about the show now, a few weeks after that Fringe run?

I still really love the show. I'm so happy that people found it, and that it spoke to them. It's a super fun show to perform and I can't wait to do it again!