Dropped

Tuesday 5th August 7pm

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Alfie Cain bursts onto the stage looking every inch the frustrated and angry footballer; but he isn’t, not any more.  Football chewed him up and spat him out, and Cain walked away from something he had dreamed of doing since he was a small boy.

This year, I end my own Fringe at Easter Road, home of Hibernian Football Club to see Dropped, a one-person show about how the football system takes in thousands of youngsters every year in the hope that they might find the next superstar, with often little thought for the players that are thrown by the wayside in that attempt to find them.  In previous years we have seen some fantastic shows across the city at Tynecastle, home of Hibs city rivals Hearts, so Dropped has a lot to live up to.

I’m pleased to say that it does, and some.

Cain is Joe, a footballer who tells us his story of a dream to become football's next big thing, of being sold that dream by coaches at a young age. What they don’t tell him is that the chances of succeeding are around 0.1%, and he is left wondering if, had he known that at the time “would I still do it?”  Of course he would. Cain uses his own personal experience, and those of others, to take us on Joe’s journey, the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, the wins, the losses, the coaches who are quick to dismiss you, and even worse the coaches who want to get a little bit to close to their young charges.

There was a bit of me that had been concerned pre-show about just how good a footballer might be at acting, but I needn’t have worried; football’s loss is clearly acting’s gain. Flitting back and forth between the young Joe and the adult Joe, broken and weary, Cain is excellent and nails both the raw broken spirited emotion of adult Joe superbly, and at the same time the self-assuredness of the younger, brasher Joe and everything in between whilst also playing a number of other coaches and teammates that we meet along the way.

Success doesn’t always come in the way we might expect, and who knows, for Cain it could come in a way he might never have expected when he was nine.  It’s a great lesson for any youngster to learn, and speaking to Cain after the show with my own teenage children he clearly has big plans for the future.  There is no reason, on this evidence, that he shouldn’t succeed.

A really short run is left here but if you can catch this elsewhere after the Fringe is over you should do. (CB)

Dropped runs daily until 9th August at Behind the Goals at Easter Rd - details here