Theatre review: Candy

A piece that began as a 15-minute short and has been developed in various forms over the last five years, Tim Fraser's Candy is a monologue for Will (Michael Waller,) a single, middle-aged Yorkshireman who was the only one in his friend circle not to go to University. His job selling car insurance isn't particularly exciting but he's good at it, and it helps support his mum and great-aunt, who like to sit in front of the TV watching and rewatching romantic comedies. Will himself doesn't consider himself particularly romantic but things take an abrupt turn when his best friend Billy moves back from London, and invites him to a gig. Billy performs in drag as the chanteuse Candy, and although he's perfectly aware that she's his best friend in a dress, part of Will believes she's real, and he falls in love with her at first sight

Unable to admit his feelings to anyone, Will begins to have increasingly sexual dreams about Candy. She becomes a consuming obsession, affecting his work and the way he treats his family. Hearing that Billy has another gig planned, he starts to consider going so he can confess his feelings.

This isn't a story about sexuality though, and the most interesting parts of the evening are those that reveal what it actually is about: As a working class Northern man Will has swallowed his feelings all his life, most pertinently his feelings of loneliness, and they've emerged abruptly in an unexpected direction. While the attraction to Candy is in part a physical one, the fact that she's an aspect of a childhood friend is a sense of comfort that plays into why Will decides she's the woman for him.

On that level it's interesting to view Will's sexual fantasies, which move from an imagined version of Candy with female genitals to one with male ones, less as a sexual awakening, and more as his mind rationalising how a relationship with someone who doesn't actually exist would work. Waller also manages to bring out moments where all these repressed emotions coming out have a real edge of danger to them, something I could have done with seeing explored more.

But Candy fails to really capitalise on its most interesting ideas - at times you can feel Fraser straining to extend 15 minutes to 70, and Nico Rao Pimparé's production similarly feels like it's run out of things to do with its lead actor pretty quickly. Waller does give split-second flashes of other characters, but the fact that we're left with Will most of the time doesn't help - his voice might be authentically depressed but it's also soporific. And though this isn't a queer story, the fact that Billy is presented as straight, and his drag act essentially treated as fancy dress, means it feels like a missed opportunity to explore it as an appropriation of queer culture. There's certainly an intriguing core here, but I'm not convinced by the execution.

Candy by Tim Fraser is booking until the 9th of September at Park Theatre 90.

Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Ali Wright.