Writer: Luke Davies
Adaptor and Director: Kate Elliott
From page to screen to stage, Kate Elliott’s adaptation of Luke Davies’ novel Candy arrives at the Old Red Lion for a brief run, leaning into some of the sequencing of the 2006 Australian film starring Heath Ledger. There is considerable polish in this latest theatre iteration, on a stylish set designed by Satvinder Bahra which covers the walls in quotes and generates considerable intimacy in this drug-fuelled romantic comedy. With many graphic scenes of intravenous drug taking, detox and its consequences, narrator Dan’s optimistic statement that “love was going to be stronger than heroin” is impressively dismantled.
When Dan and art student Candy meet for the first time in the 1980s, the pair fall deeply and quickly in love, a kind of intoxication neither has felt before. But Candy is curious about Dan’s addiction to heroin and decides to try it for herself, leading to years of addiction as their feelings for each other and the endless highs they seek become imbalanced, promising regularly that they will finally get clean and start their real life.
Elliott’s adaptation has a filmic quality from the start, using sudden cuts, music and montage sequences to visually summarise days or weeks of action and is used particularly effectively to show the series of heroin peaks the pair experiences as well as the slog of homemade attempts at rehabilitation. The cyclical nature of addiction and the strong grip it has on both Dan and Candy is well staged, as is the delusion that either character is fully in control of their binges, and Elliott very quickly establishes the destructive co-dependence that develops between the couple.
The play also doesn’t shy away from some intense physical and emotional experiences in a show that carries an important content warning about drug use and overdose as well as miscarriage, although the latter also involves a traumatic birth and infant death which are minor spoilers but important additional trigger warnings for those who have never seen the film or read the book. These are sympathetically managed within the story and underline the ongoing cost of Candy’s addiction on her own body and mental health.
Advertised as 75 minutes but running at 95, the show struggles for pace in the second half, feeling far more episodic than the first with many repeat sequences that require some trimming back. As the action stalls, even the charisma of Kyle Malan as Dan and Freya James’ Candy struggles to keep the material feeling fresh, and this part of the show relies heavily on lengthy scenes of drug taking.
All of this is told from Dan’s perspective who hops in and out of scenes as narrator, but one of the failings of the original material, which remains unaddressed in Elliott’s adaptation, is the extent to which Candy is manipulated by her lover first by providing money to sustain their habit through sex work and later by taking on the primary domestic duties. Faithful as this adaptation is to Davies, Elliott lets Dan off the hook by not probing his coercive behaviours further and instead allowing his habit to become the excuse, often using comedy moments to track around his faults. Candy has some agency in the story and chooses to try heroin herself but there needs to be a greater assessment of Dan’s culpability for the things that happen to the couple and why it is Candy’s body that suffers for it.
Runs Until 31 August 2024
