Fruitcake, The Hope Theatre
Our Camden Fringe 2025 interviews keep coming! We’re well on our way to reach the 100 target we set, in our efforts to give you a good taster of what you can expect from this festival that begins on 28 July. You can find all the currently published interviews here.
This one-woman-show follows Fruitcake, a first year university student who slowly becomes involved with an alluring, off-putting class mate with whom she shares a penchant for awkward situations and films with unnecessarily long titles. This is a coming of age mystery that promises to keep you guessing until the very end. To take at least a little of the guesswork about what to expect, Jaimee Doyle sat down with us to tell us about the show.
Fruitcake will play at The Hope Theatre from 7 to 10 August, tickets available here.
What can audiences expect from the show?
Fruitcake is a funny, romantic and mysterious one woman show that will pull you in with charm and spit you out with questions. At first glance, it’s a coming of age story about a loud, proud, and sexually liberated university student living her best queer life. But when she becomes obsessed with a mysterious classmate, the cracks begin to show and a playful story of lust and identity unravels into something far more unsettling. It blends comedy, psychological thriller, and a whole lot of neurodiversity, Fruitcake is a exploration of desire, memory, and the masks we wear to feel in control.
Is Camden Fringe going to be the show’s first time on stage, or have you already performed elsewhere?
Fruitcake has already had a few lives already! with performances at Brighton Fringe, Melbourne Fringe, and the One Act Play Festival in Melbourne. Each showing brought something new: laughter, tears, uncomfortable gasps, and rich conversations with audiences who connected deeply with it.
Now, we’re bringing Fruitcake to Camden Fringe to take it to the next level. Camden has a reputation for showcasing fresh, fun, and wacky work so it feels like the perfect home for the London premiere!
What was your inspiration behind the show?
Fruitcake was born out of my own dating experiences and the intense, complicated friendships that have shaped me. I’ve always felt that stories about queer love often miss the mark, especially when it comes to neurodiversity. Neurodivergent people are so frequently portrayed as burdens, as hard work, or simply unloveable. I wanted to challenge that. This show is my way of sharing moments some lived, some imagined, that say the opposite. Being neurodivergent isn’t something to fix or hide, and that love, real love, means wanting to understand someone fully. Fruitcake is a celebration of messiness, connection, obsession, and the beautiful complexity of being wired a little differently.
How long have you been working on the play?
I’ve been working on Fruitcake in one form or another for over four years. It started as a short, devised piece I made to audition for drama schools in Australia just five minutes long, but it stuck with me. While training at the Victorian College of the Arts, I kept coming back to it, rewriting, expanding, and letting it evolve as I did. By 2023, it had grown into a full-length one-woman show that I first staged at the One Act Play Festival in Melbourne. So while the script is new, the heart of Fruitcake has been with me for a long time.
IAre there any plans for what comes next after the show has finished its run – for you or the show?
Absolutely! Fruitcake is just getting started. After Camden Fringe, I’m hoping to take the show to other festivals across the UK and potentially back to Australia for a return season. I’m currently in talks to develop it further with a view to touring in 2026, including accessible performances and Q&As around neurodivergence, queerness, and representation in theatre. For me personally, this show has opened up so many creative doors, and I plan to keep writing and performing work that’s messy, heartfelt, and unapologetically queer.
If you had to describe your show as a colour what would it be?
Green. Not the soft, pastel kind but something darker, wilder, a little overgrown. From the first poster and the first run I’ve always seen her in green always! I don’t know why!
If you had to describe your show as a meal what would it be?
well… fruitcake!
Thanks Jaimee, it sounds like your show is already a success. We hope that Camden Fringe is a springboard for taking your show even further.
Fruitcake will play at The Hope Theatre from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 August. If you’d like to join us in a slice, then you’ll find further information and booking opportunities by following the link below.
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