A Young(ish) Perspective sat down with Tim Fraser, creator of Candy. This show is brought to Edinburgh Festival Fringe by Reboot Theatre Company and is running at Underbelly Bristo Square from 5-29th August.
This follows a sell-out run at the King’s Head Theatre in London in 2020 and a special online performance released last year.
You must be excited about finally getting Candy to Fringe – is this your first time here, a dream come true or absolutely nerve wracking? Or perhaps all three!
So excited! It’s not my first time here, but it is the other two things for sure! My dad was from Edinburgh, so I’ve been to the festival as a punter a lot over the years. Before Candy, the only thing I ever took up here was a student production of Gotcha by Barrie Keeffe, where I was essentially helping out my uni mate who directed. To have my own work performed here is absolutely a dream come true and at the same time absolutely terrifying. My dad used to order copies of the programme for us to flick through and circle things we wanted to see ahead of the festival. I just got my programme in the mail and to see Candy there was pretty emotional. I just hope lots of people circle it.
To everyone out there who has started with short skits – how long did it take to expand on Candy to become the length it is now? Was it difficult to make it a longer, more evolved piece?
The first version of the short skit of Candy was performed in 2017 for my film school grad showcase, by the wonderful Wilf Scolding. A long time ago! After that, I was submitting the short to scratch nights while working on other things, including a short film adaptation of the story, but to be honest never thought about expanding it. That was until it was performed at ‘Reboot: Shorts’, and Nico and Mike approached me about making it a full-length play at the end of 2018.
At the start, I had a hard time figuring out how to make it longer, as the original piece kind of came out of me in a burst of creativity. The short version was about a brief moment in time, and I wasn’t sure how to carry on the story after that and still keep it authentic. When I decided to go deeper rather than wider, and really focus in on this moment in time and all the ways it affects the protagonist, that was when I felt I could add something really worthwhile to this story. I then ended up writing the first draft of it in another creative burst.
Before the full-length piece was first performed in January 2020 at the King’s Head Theatre in London, I collaborated closely with Nico and Mike, who gave their thoughts, feedback and notes as I rewrote. Since we’ve started production for the Fringe this year, there’s been even more edits, notes and rewrites – stuff debated over, stuff added, and stuff taken away. I think what we’ve ended up with is quite special, and I’m so excited to share this latest and greatest version with as big an audience as possible.
Is Candy inspired by any real-life experience of yourself or others around you?
Multiple people have asked me whether Candy is essentially a memoir, and I always feel like I’m disappointing them when I say it’s not! No, but really, there’s a lot in Will that’s in me, as well as a lot that’s not. Things that certain friends were going through inspired the play, as well as my own experiences. Mike Waller, who plays Will, really informed the character and made him his own with his performance and by bringing his own experiences to the table, too. But have I ever seen my mate perform in drag and fallen in love with them at first sight? I’m afraid not!
I notice Michael is the only actor mentioned – does he switch between roles or is Candy an elusive temptress just out of reach of both the audience and Will?
Candy is indeed an elusive temptress. What a great phrase! I’m stealing it.
Candy isn’t there physically, but she is ‘present’, if that makes sense, and not just because Will has a go at impersonating her voice at a couple of points! We have a microphone stand and mic on stage, we have an empty seat, a light… at points these things kind of “become” Candy. But, yes, as you phrased it, she’s just out of reach, and that’s why we never see her. One of the big things about Will is he’s a massive romantic – at least when it comes to Candy – and he uses very sweeping, elevated language to describe her. We want the audience to see Candy how he sees Candy – the most beautiful woman in the world – so they’ve got to use their imaginations.
Masculinity and love aren’t referred together often (which is toxic in itself) – what encouraged you to make this the theme of the play?
That’s a very good point. Often, when things are about masculinity, they’re about aggression and brotherhood and all that stuff. I wanted to explore how full-on love and heartache can be, especially when you’re doing that very male thing of not talking to anyone about it. You button it up, fearing being a burden to your mates and loved ones, and it eats away at you. When you complicate that by taking a character who thinks he knows himself and adding in a sexual and romantic element that he could not have anticipated, you have a recipe for disaster. Will tells the audience his story because he has to tell someone… although he almost can’t do it at the start of the play, getting close to giving up at one point. And yeah, I wanted to make it clear that Will is romantic, emotional, and in love with his male mate’s drag queen persona, and none of that makes him any less masculine. Problem is that Will, as a product of the patriarchy, doesn’t see it that way.
What do you want your audience to take away from this piece?
“If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” Um, no, obviously it sounds massively trite to quote RuPaul here, but I genuinely feel like life throws a lot at us and this quote is an incredibly hard but important thing to remember. Especially here, now, for this generation. So I hope audiences leave feeling like everything’s going to be OK, eventually.
Is there anything else you’ve already noticed on the Fringe programme that you can’t wait to see?
Yes, loads! I’ll name a few. I’m very excited to see Crybabies’ new show Bagbeard. They’re three comedians who I saw perform in 2019 right before the pandemic and my cheeks were hurting from laughing so much. I’m also buzzing to see Godot is a Woman by Silent Faces because I’ve heard such great things. Finally, I’m super keen to see Butchered by Expial Atrocious, as it looks dark and full-on, in all the best ways. Nic Lawton, who’s in the show, has been an enthusiastic supporter of Candy for a while, so shouts out to them!
Finally, any other works in the making at the moment?
Theatre-wise, I wrote a play called As It Comes that got quite far in some competitions last year, which I’m currently redrafting. It’s a love story between an able-bodied woman and a man with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. It’s told in reverse-chronological order, so we see a very sick man gradually get better and his relationship go from broken-down to whole. So yeah, it’s kind-of bittersweet!
I’m working on a series of illustrated children’s books with Sarah Soe called Juniper Mae that I’m very excited about. The first one will be out next year, and we’re working on the second one now. It’s a sci-fi adventure story about a young inventor and her best friend Albie who save the day from robots and beasts. Quite different to Candy…
I’m also working on a TV pilot script with the BBC Writersroom that I’m very excited about but want to keep a little close to the chest at the moment as it’s still a pretty fresh idea!