INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Harry Daisley, on tackling Censorship and Comp-het when ‘Everything’s a Beard’. 

It’s been two years since we caught All is Pink Productions’ titular debut at EdFringe 2023 (read our review here!), and ever since they’ve been concocting a brand new extravagant, over-the-top twisted black comedy coming to Camden Fringe 2025. We caught Writer/Director Harry Daisley for a pixelated pint to see how The Upward Journey of a Champagne Bubble is shaking up love, lavender, and a lavish dinner for four.

You can catch The Upward Journey of a Champagne Bubble this Camden Fringe 2025 at Etcetera Theatre, 6th-8th August from 5pm (60 mins). Tickets are available through the Camden Fringe Box Office.

Callie: Hi Harry! Tell us a bit about what you’re serving up in The Upward Journey of a Champagne Bubble.

Harry: It’s full of laughs, taking on satire and ‘poking the bear’ on class, gender politics – always with a fettered sense of comedy. Like our previous show All is Pink in West Berkshire County, subversion is at its absolute core, to take a familiar thing and make it strange, make it weird, really get into the flesh of social complacencies. It’s what we love to do as a theatre company, we’re always trying to connect with and empower our audience, to give them something to really dig into after the show – politically, socially.

Champagne Bubble was initially inspired by research I was doing for an ethics module; I was reading into the laws regarding gay men who are migrating away from persecution to seek asylum. In the UK, there’s this really invasive process where these men have to essentially prove their homosexuality by answering questions like “do you share a bed with your partner?”, “how long have you been together?” – questions which a straight couple would never be faced with.

It got me wondering how you might possibly ‘prove’ a relationship. So a bit like we did in All is Pink, I decided to spin that core question on its head and make it a universal rule. According to the world of Champagne Bubble, in the eyes of the government, queer people don’t exist. It’s all stark censorship, lavender relationships, and everything is a beard. Nothing is as it seems, there are so many secrets hidden under all the ruffles and hoity-toity behaviour.

Callie: Sounds like a real cocktail of themes and influences! What parts of the show do you think are going to leave the audience fizzing?

Harry: The plot in itself is crazy – the show is set in a world where everyone has to be in a romantically and sexually viable heterosexual relationship by the age of 25 or face castration. It’s a darkly comedic, Lobster-esque world, which is sure to resonate with our demographic [20s-something theatre people terrified of ‘settling down’].

The show follows two couples over the course of an evening’s dinner – Marmaduke and Daisy, who have just turned 25 are about to receive their ‘love inspection’ from their adjudicators Michelle and Lance Boyle. The audience can look forward to four massive, over the top characters that are camp, quick-witted, and constantly at odds with each other as the night unfolds. 

But beyond the setting, the show’s core is about love – how we love in a contemporary society in an age of self-censorship and conservatism, how we grapple with the clearly defined, traditional, and heteronormative conventions of love, and how people who venture outside of that template, especially queer people, are immediately branded as ‘Other’. Champagne Bubble really pushes the idea of love as an amorphous phenomenon, in spite of a society which compulsively puts things in boxes, full of identity politics. Love is vast, all encompassing, and cannot be quantified, commodified, or distilled.

Callie: With Camden Fringe 2025 just around the corner, what are you most excited for?

Harry: This will be my first time at Camden Fringe, and I cannot wait. It being spread across a really vibrant, artistic part of London is really exciting for me. I love the theatre scene in Camden the rest of the year, it’s phenomenal. Full of real down-to-earth theatre lovers making it happen, rehearsing in community centers and pub cellars. It’s going to be such a different experience to our debut in Edinburgh, a whole different game of marketing the show, reaching a new audience. I’m really excited to share the work with new collaborators, meet new amazing artistic people.

After Camden, we’re a small but mighty company and we’ve got some big aspirations – getting the show to Edinburgh, obviously, to Leeds which is home for a lot of our company, and hopefully some more theatres around London! It’s definitely new uncharted waters for us, but we’re ready to dive in, keep developing the company, and keep making big big characters.

Callie: Finally, without being too leading – given the themes of Binge Fringe, if The Upward Journey of Champagne Bubble was a beverage of any kind, what would it be and why?

Harry: Whilst the show’s title gives me a rather obvious answer, I’m going to be specific. Champagne, but a really cheap, sweet, flat bottle that’s been left out overnight after a house party. 

Be sure to catch The Upward Journey of a Champagne Bubble this Camden Fringe 2025 at Etcetera Theatre, 6th-8th August from 5pm (60 mins). Tickets are available through the Camden Fringe Box Office.