If you spent any time on YouTube in its early days, you may well have stumbled across Euan’s World, a modest channel where a 12 year old Euan Munro shared snippets of everyday life and uploaded homemade comedy sketches. Twenty years later, Munro is at the Edinburgh Fringe with Playback, an entertaining and surprisingly affecting look back at the strange reality of growing up online.There is a certain rivalry at the heart of the story between Euan and friend Cammy. Both have their own channels, both are determined to become famous, and both are chasing the kind of internet success that felt entirely possible in those early days of YouTube. While Cammy initially seems to be winning the race, a chance comment suddenly propels Euan towards the online stardom that had seemed just out of reach.
What follows will probably not come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with the internet. The sudden attention that comes with online fame proves difficult enough for a young teenager to process. More troubling still is the darker side of the internet, exposing Euan to situations and interactions that no child should have to navigate.
Munro speaks candidly about those experiences, largely inhabiting the perspective of 12 year old Euan throughout. It is an effective choice, allowing the audience to experience events through the eyes of an ambitious and optimistic child rather than with the benefit of adult hindsight. As adults, we can often see the warning signs long before Euan does, but Playback does an excellent job of placing us inside that youthful innocence. There is always a part of us hoping things will somehow work out differently.
Munro builds an immediate rapport with the audience, inviting them into an intensely personal story without ever becoming overly self indulgent. There is plenty of humour throughout, much of it drawn from the awkwardness of revisiting old videos and teenage ambitions, but the laughs also serve a deeper purpose. Beneath the nostalgia lies a serious examination of internet safety and the risks young people continue to face online today.
The simple set, dominated by the trappings of a child’s bedroom complete with a Minecraft duvet cover, acts as a constant reminder of just how young Euan really was. That contrast becomes particularly powerful in the closing moments, when the gap between the child and adult versions of Euan is brought sharply into focus.
Playback is a compelling piece of comedy drama that blends humour and heartbreak with real skill. Honest, thoughtful and often deeply moving, it shines a light on the hidden costs of growing up online.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
