Liam David Malcolm & Robin Halliday on Gay Romance Drama Broken Boys
After the success of our 2025 Camden Fringe Interview series, we thought it only right to attempt a repeat for 2026. So throughout July we’ll be publishing new interviews each day to give a taste of what to expect from London’s best fringe theatre festival. The festival starts Monday 3 August this year, so we may give ourselves a couple of days off inbetween the end of the interviews and the first shows… then again, we might not.
You can find out more about Camden Fringe, along with details of every show playing this August here. You can also find all of this year’s interviews as they are published here.
There is a common modern delusion that the contemporary gay experience is easy, wrapped up in a neat package of hard-won rights and glossy mainstream representation. Yet underneath the surface lies a persistent friction; societal demands, the rigid labelling of sexuality, and an internalised fear of authentic connection born from growing up queer.
Heading to The Hen and Chickens Theatre for Camden Fringe 2026, Broken Boys tackles this friction head-on. Originally conceived as a sprawling university ensemble piece called The Gay Play, writer Liam David Malcolm condensed the production into a razor-sharp, devastatingly honest romance drama that strips away the clean-cut romanticism of mainstream TV tropes. We sat down with Liam and co-creator Robin Halliday to dive into toxic masculinity, the reality of fringe tech rehearsals, and why their show is a fruity but dangerous cocktail.
If you had to describe the vibe of your show in just one sentence, what would it be and how does it manifest on stage? ROBIN:
Broken Boys is honest and tragic. It’s the kind of tragedy that comes from honesty.
Why is 2026 the perfect time for this show to be seen?
LIAM: I think we’re living in a time right now where being queer and/or trans is something that a lot of people feel exists in the public domain. As in, everyone has a right to comment on, lust after, or outright dispute queer love and identity as if it doesn’t impact lives on the receiving end. Yet, as a gay man living in London, I feel there’s also a delusion, which is something I myself bought into for a long time, that the modern gay experience is easy because we have more rights and representation than ever before.
Broken Boys explores the friction of labelling sexuality and gender identity against societal expectation and demand through a rather complicated relationship between the characters. The topics explored in the play, if not from gender studies, come from personal revelations in therapy rooms. We’re seeing more talk of toxic masculinity and the “manosphere”, this is my contribution to how all that impacts the gay community.
What was the initial spark that made you realise this story had to be told right now?
LIAM: From a self-interest point of view, I just wanted to play the role of a gay man with depth. I went to drama school and so much of the early training involved classical texts where the male-presenting characters were butch and archetypal, or their queerness was interpretive and subtle. It was frustrating. Queer people spend a lifetime translating their lives into straight narratives, and I was ready to play queer men in all their vibrancy!
In terms of writing, I felt that there was something to say about the disconnect I’d been experiencing with queer men. This was not due to hook-up culture, which I had seen a lot of onstage, but because of an internalised fear of connecting, which I believe all queer people share to a degree. It’s a result of growing up learning that our authentic selves aren’t correct. In the play’s initial reception, I had queer audience members expressing their relief at seeing an experience so personal to them portrayed onstage, and it made me realise that, despite a rise in mainstream representation, a lot of queer stories lack authenticity.
Is this version how you originally envisioned it or has it changed drastically since you first put pen to paper?
LIAM: Funnily enough, the play has changed drastically. It started off as a much bigger production, aptly named The Gay Play, and centred around the lives of a group of gay students in a university’s LGBTQIA+ society. It became too big for a fringe production, so I condensed it down to a three-hander. I also refocused the play from the modern gay experience, which is quite a broad topic, to the romanticisation of the bully-to-lover trope in Queer TV; think Sex Education, Glee, and Heartstopper. That made for a concise and impactful story, whilst still keeping the essence of what I wanted to stage in the bigger play.
Being a fringe festival, we all know sets have to be bare minimum. How have you got around this constraints?
ROBIN: The show is set over a number of years with several locations and we are seeing fragments of the boys’ lives pieced together over those years, so really the play lends itself to having a limitation on set and props. This way the audience gets to fill in the rest, which, I hope, allows them to relate. Maybe they will fill in the rest of the picture with an image of their own high school, their bedroom, etc.
If your show had a soundtrack, what songs would definitely be on it, and why?
ROBIN: It’d have Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe!, SZA’s Kill Bill, The Cardigans’ Lovefool, Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time, and Kate Bush’s The Wedding List. There’s a lot of deep symbolism in these specific tracks.
If your show was a drink at the venue bar, what would be the ingredients?
LIAM: It’d probably be some awful concoction that’d get you messy levels of drunk. Think double, no, quadruple, shots: tequila and vodka and a ton of juice to sweeten it up. Underneath the fruitiness, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
What words of advice or encouragement would you give anyone thinking about doing Camden Fringe next year?
ROBIN: Typically, the window you’re given for tech is tight. Discuss a game plan with the team beforehand so people know exactly what they are doing, especially with your lighting and sound operator! Create a strict schedule so time doesn’t get away from you.
Thanks to Liam and Robin for their time. Broken Boys will play at The Hen and Chickens Theatre as part of Camden Fringe from Friday 14 to Sunday 16 August.
