Candy opens on a set of backboard-black walls crowded with chalk messages: ‘We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars’ …’We are the cool people’…‘I would vomit up my life if I could’….These refer back to the book from which this play is adapted, ‘Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction’ by the Australian Luke Davies who is credited with writing the script.
It opens brightly with Dan bringing Candy home to his crummy apartment in a dreamy love sequence where everything seems wonderful – except Dan’s drug habit. He is falling in love with Candy, there is no doubt of that, but he is also ‘scamming her for a bit of cash.’
Newly infatuated Candy, appropriately dressed in a pink jumpsuit, is brilliantly captured by Freya James as a fragile, girlish art student eager to try new things. Dan is wily and underhand but Kyle Malan’s thoughtful portrayal gives him a beguiling innocence, bringing out all the humanity and vulnerability in someone who even his girlfriend calls a ‘cock ferret.’
This play is full of quietly brilliant dramatic moments such as when this winsome girl inquisitively looks at Dan’s drug paraphernalia; when he tenderly holds her hair back for her ‘first taste’ as she leans to snort some heroin; when, deeper into addiction, they clink their needles together like drinkers saying ‘cheers’.
Director Kate Elliott has a light touch with heavy material, alternately using music and movement to depict the lovers’ journey through the highways and byways of hell. We see the drug deals gone wrong; his stealing the dope meant for both of them; the pathetically beautiful dance of addicted, prostituted Candy.
‘I didn’t want to fuck her life up, I wanted to make mine better,’ Dan whines. He is the eternal optimist, forever promising a better future when they will get ‘cleaned up’ after some life event like getting married or having a baby. They do both of these; it is no spoiler alert to say they don’t make life better. Candy has to explain to Dan, ‘Our life is more than bad, it is utterly fucked and you’re evil.’
The twin themes of love and addiction writhe around each other as each partner seems to be just on the verge of recovery. Not to give too much of the story away: while heroin addiction seems bad; after ‘home detox’ it gets worse. Candy’s problems are deeper than drug addiction.
This play pulls no punches, leaves no body part unpunctured by a needle, no receptacle innocent of vomit. It must be very triggering for some people who recognise similar experiences; two audience members left during the performance. For those of us who stuck it out this was an intense, visceral ride through the dark valley of addiction.
Playwright: Luke Davies, adapted and directed by Kate Elliott
Cast: Freya James, Kyle Malan, Conor Craig-Stephens, Bridget Benstead
Duration: 80 minutes without interval
Until: 31 August 2024