Fan/Girlin the Demonstration Room at Summerhall, is every bit the quintessential Fringe. A poignant message delivered in a hilarious way through audience participation at its strangest. It brings the ‘play’ back to the theatre.

I’m a football muggle myself and went with my partner (a women’s football expert) to review this show so he could loosen up a bit. Little did I know the show would appeal to me so much: here was my story being told – and that of every girl growing up in the UK in the 90s and 00s! Through incarnations of her younger self, Briony Byrne tells us her abrupt transition from ‘football mad girl’ playing for Hertfordshire’s under-11 football team to the insecurities of a pre-pubescent Catholic girls’ school.

Eric Cantona, once football icon turned all-knowing deity, acts as Briony’s spiritual guide as she tries to make sense of the end of her girlhood. She battles the social pressures placed on her. She struggles to keep up with the increasing pace of external influences: make-up, boys, puberty, sexuality, smiling more, standing up straight, looking pretty – but not too pretty – and all the terrible pressures faced by the modern teenager. Any girl who grew up in the 90s and 00s will be able to deeply identify with this.

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The props are very silly and the audience is constantly involved. We take part in assemblies, play football in the tiny 19th century anatomical theatre we’re crammed into, learn complicated formations that look suspiciously like school disco dances… I’ve rarely seen a Fringe audience so engrossed in the experience. This felt like the funniest school break between lessons when you don’t really want the bell to ring. A slightly poor video, a disjointed opening and a few too many props may have diluted the message before it got going.

The script and Briony Byrne’s performance highlight the important but rarely explored aspects of the relationship girls are meant to have with sport and their own bodies. Just be prepared to be exposed to the naked truth (literally) of what it means to have to conform and leave childhood dreams behind. In the wake of the Olympics Fan/Girl is an electrifying play at a turning point in the history of women’s sport.