CANDY at Park Theatre. Photo by Ali Wright.Directed by Nico Rao Pimparé and explored over 5 years in extenuating and often challenging circumstances, the piece has clearly become a labour of love for the three men — but has the protracted developmental journey been worthwhile?
It is easy to criticise small scale productions for their lack of budget and fringe-y style, but often nuggets of pure gold can be found when the writing is wholly original and compelling. Unfortunately this yarn about a northern man who becomes captivated by a boyhood chum’s drag persona when he returns after years in London to perform with his small band, is laboured and stretched in a way which left this reviewer scrambling for positives.
Sure, Waller is engaging and even appealingly earnest, but sadly the writing never manages to rise above mundane, even when characters are intentionally tacked onto the main thread to flesh-out the narrative and presumably add interest. An ageing aunt, (thoughtlessly and unkindly referred to as Toadface) sits in her armchair watching TV. After her death our protagonist learns that she was a real person with real heartache and a romantic backstory, but the clunky revelation is a didactic and entirely predictable device which lands heavily. Another woman, Will’s boss (and Head of Sales at the car insurance firm where he ekes out an uninspiring existence), serves as a further filler persona presumably introduced to add interest and a couple of laughs, but she feels underdeveloped and largely irrelevant to events. Even the twinkle-eyed Mr Waller struggles to vary timbre sufficiently over the hour to imbue much interest in the characters or their experiences beyond the first 20 minutes. Consequently — and despite hoping that the ending would deliver a thought-provoking, moving or surprising conclusion — the play grinds to a relatively underwhelming conclusion and simply peters-out.
As a result, a serious question remains: Why would a troupe which is clearly capable of delivering written and performed naturalistic dialogue, continue beyond 5 years to flog a weary story (which will remain constrained by its simplistic and largely unbelievable central premise) when they could focus their creative juices on developing a new and fresh piece of writing for theatre (or television)? Hopefully at the end of the Park Theatre run, they will ask themselves that very question — and I very much look forward to reviewing the result.
