Myra’s Story, the 5-star sell-out show at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was presented with the highly-prized Bobby Award at the end of its final performance.
In front of a full-house in the Palais de Variété Spiegeltent in Assembly George Square Gardens, writer and director Brian Foster, award-winning actor Fíonna Hewitt-Twamley, and Assembly Festival’s Artistic Director, William Burdett-Coutts, received their ‘Bobby’ - Broadway Baby’s top award for outstanding performance at this year’s Festival Fringe.
The Bobby Award, fashioned after the iconic Greyfriars Bobby statue, is awarded to the best of the best at the Fringe, those shows that shine brightest amongst all the festival’s 5-star shows. This year Broadway Baby have awarded just three Bobbys to 5-star shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Richard Beck, Editor of Broadway Baby said: “We are delighted to make this award to Myra’s Story this year. There is no single criterion that makes a show Bobby-worthy, it is a combination of things that have simply blown us away and Myra’s Story is an outstanding piece of theatre.”
Brian Foster, writer and director of Myra’s Story added: “We are thrilled to receive this award. Myra’s story is a mix of hilarity and heartbreak and it has been amazing to be back on stage performing live to full-houses at the festival this year. We have plans to tour Myra’s Story next year so we hope that as more venues open, more people will get the opportunity to see this fantastic show.”
Myra’s Story is about a middle-aged, homeless Dublin street drinker played by Fionna Hewitt-Twamley who is funny, feisty, and foul-mouthed. She begs from passers-by for her drink money and recreates her hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately heart-breaking backstory. A story that takes her from fresh faced teenage bride with a baby son and all to live for, to the tragic condition she finds herself in today. Audiences laugh and cry, often at the same time, as Myra sweeps them along on a real rollercoaster-of-emotions ride. Playing all the characters, acting out all the incredible events that have led her to alcoholism and destitution, hers is the face we habitually turn our head away from and pretend not to see. In the play, Myra never wallows in self-pity. Never cries. After so many often brutal years spent fighting just to exist on the streets of Dublin, Myra has no tears left to shed.
