Few athletes dare to rewrite themselves.
Fewer still choose to do so under the unforgiving glare of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
James Willstrop is about to do just that. After two decades at the top of a brutally solitary sport, he is stepping onto a different stage altogether — performing Daddy, Tomorrow Will I Be a Man?, a one-man musical of his own creation. It is a story that bares his soul: a collision of ambition, grief and the unquiet tension between professional drive and personal connection.
For Willstrop, the Fringe is not merely a stage; it is a proving ground. Next month, at The Space @ Niddry Street, the Yorkshireman will swap racket for rawness, telling an intensely personal story about love, loss and the search for what truly matters.
In sport, Willstrop’s precision was his hallmark: matches played with the cold accuracy of an engineer.
Beneath that surface, though, simmered regrets and doubts — the pain of losing his mother Lesley to cancer at 16, the fear of commitment, and the selfishness demanded by greatness.
“Being number one and all that stuff was fantastic,” he reflects. “But I do look back and the way I was as a person sometimes was over the top. The ambition just became overwhelming and overpowering. I would do anything to achieve what I wanted. Looking back, I became a bit of a clown and a bit of an idiot.”
That candid awareness now drives his work. The play is framed by one of the most brutal training sessions of his life, during which memories of Lesley — and reflections on his partner Vanessa and son Logan — invade.
The question that lingers: can the pursuit of perfection coexist with the responsibilities of love and fatherhood?
The title, Daddy, Tomorrow Will I Be a Man?, comes from the voice of a child asking the impossible.
“It’s not completely literal,” Willstrop says. “It’s about a child asking a parent about life, about the complexities of that relationship. That question encapsulates quite a lot.”
The play’s emotional core is shaped by the presence of Lesley, guiding rather than sentimental. “There’s a line from her where I’m talking about lost time — walking your child up and down when you’ve got training to do and things to achieve. And she just says, ‘Look, there’s nothing more important in the world than spending time with a child and nurturing that child.’ That’s the crux of the play.”
The production — co-created with musical director Sam Johnson and featuring six original songs — is part monologue, part musical odyssey. The music, Willstrop insists, is not decorative but integral.
“In good musicals, songs further the story. That’s what I wanted to do.”
His experience in elite sport shapes his theatrical instincts. “In sport you have to have light and shade — you can’t just play squash at the same pace or it becomes one-dimensional. It’s the same with a show. You need drama, moments of lightness, then you push forward again.”
For Willstrop, this is the most exposed he has ever felt.
“This will be as nervous as I’ll probably ever get,” he admits. “With squash I knew what I was doing — I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself. With this, I have no idea what could happen. It’s all your own stuff.”
Acting has long been a quiet passion, nurtured alongside his sporting career. He studied creative writing at Leeds University before lockdown and appeared in York productions ranging from Young Frankenstein to Oliver Twist.
Yet a full original show at the Fringe — with no hiding place — is another level entirely.
“When you’ve written your own piece, it’s scary, isn’t it? You’re always doubting — is this rubbish? Is it any good? Are people going to respond? I love theatre and the live aspect of anything. To share something personal feels right.”
For the audience, the appeal is simple: to watch an athlete strip away the armour, to hear the private thoughts behind the medals. At 41, Willstrop is no longer chasing another ranking, but something harder to measure: connection.
The stakes are high. There are no referees, no points to win, no rallies to save him. “This is the first time I’ve really written a play or put it on,” he says. “It’s totally scary. But that’s the point.”
This August, at the world’s biggest arts festival, James Willstrop — actor, writer, musician, and once the best in the world — will walk into the light, asking the question at the heart of his play:
Daddy, tomorrow will I be a man?
