Scotland

ROLEPLAY – Summerhall

Sex sells. It always has and judging by the sold-out run of ROLEPLAY at Summerhall, it probably always will. The skin-heavy posters are everywhere, the publicity machine has worked extraordinarily well, but there is an uncomfortable question here. Is ROLEPLAY exploiting the very thing it purports to condemn?

Written and performed by Hannah Reilly, this one-woman show follows Danni, a feminist podcaster who discovers that sexualising herself brings the attention her more earnest work could not. There is potentially fertile ground here, the commodification of feminism, online identity and the uncomfortable intersection between empowerment and exploitation.

Reilly is undoubtedly a committed and energetic performer. My problem is not so much with the performance as with the dramatic world the play gives her.

I love the control possible in a single hander. Indeed, it is one of the reasons I am repeatedly drawn to them. But that control requires boundaries. ROLEPLAY feels too open. Reilly jumps between microphones, characters, situations and locations. Anything can happen anywhere and at any time. Instead of accumulating dramatic pressure, the energy gradually dissipates.

Compare this with Boiler House 6 at the Pleasance, another single-hander I saw this Fringe. Trapped within the claustrophobic world of the Titanic, its boundaries become its strength. We know the world, we know its limitations and, crucially, we know there is no escape. That confinement creates pressure.

ROLEPLAY needs some of that claustrophobia. It describes itself as moving from comedy towards psychological thriller, yet rather than Danni’s world closing around her, it seems continually to expand. Eventually, for me, it distils into surprisingly little.

I was also uncomfortable with the association the production creates between Danni’s increasingly sexualised performance and drug use. Perhaps this is intended as another stage in her disintegration, but the implication deserves greater interrogation than the play appears willing to give it.

And that returns me to the central contradiction. Is this really a condemnation of an industry that monetises women’s bodies, or is it simply particularly good at employing the same mechanisms itself? The provocative imagery has certainly helped make ROLEPLAY one of Summerhall’s conspicuous sell-outs.

Perhaps that is the point.

But if it is, I wanted the play to dig considerably deeper into it.

Playing until August 31st 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026ROLEPLA

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 14th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: