Writer and Director: Lauren Derry
Lauren Derry’s character Sophie is in search of a missing caravan, a place of childhood happiness in this 30-minute piece about evolving and complex father-daughter relationships and missed opportunities. Showing at the Etcetera Theatre as part of the Camden Fringe Festival, Caravan Tea Party still feels like half a show, a sketch of a much more substantial idea that is yet to emerge from this loosely structured collection of memories and regrets.
Derry sets up a number of intriguing ideas at the start of the performance, questions that remain unanswered when the performance ends half an hour later. It begins in Nicaragua where Sophie is ‘solo travelling’ although she insists she is coordinating with a friend shortly. Immediately a number of dramatic possibilities emerge that should open up a series of questions that Caravan Tea Party can address either as its central or subplot: who is Sophie, why is she specifically in this country, what has happened to make her want to travel alone, is the friend real and is Sophie running away from or towards something.?This will give context and shape to the dialogue that follows and help Derry shape Sophie’s direction through the story.
Next, the show is currently framed as an interview session, potentially with a therapist, although this is never spelt out, so at some point a future iteration of the script needs to consider what this relationship is. If it’s not therapy, what else could it be (a police interview perhaps) and why would Sophie be taking the session online in a café? There also needs to be some jeopardy, a dynamic to the interviewer-interviewee interaction that would add more depth to their conversation. Perhaps the unnamed owner of the clipboard pushes Sophie too far, asking questions she is not comfortable answering, or maybe this is Sophie engaging with her own conscience manifested as a Zoom call. Derry’s options are endless, but the interviewer needs to be an independent character who also drives the narrative.
There is a basis here for development, and Derry has started to articulate the difficult relationship with Sophie’s father that implies guilt and perhaps a feeling of being overwhelmed when his health suffers. The impressions of a childhood dominated by this man, based in the caravan, are interesting and vivid but could be more so with further anecdotes of happy, messy or difficult times as Sophie grew up and her parents’ marriage broke down. Fleshing out some of the other characters around Sophie and her father would also help to give greater substance to the world Derry’s creations are re-inhabiting so the recreated memories feel as tangible to the audience as the present-day scenes, perhaps more so if these are the places that Sophie is drawn to.
There are lots of interesting pop culture references from Transformers movies to EastEnders, Drag Race and American Psycho, but the play needs to expand and then work harder to emphasise its own metaphor: the lost caravan as the last happy place that Sophie knew but can no longer find.
Reviewed on 26 August 2026
Camden Fringe 2026 runs until 30 August
