Interview: Will Johnston, Love’s A Beach

Ahead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, we’re chatting with a range of creatives who will be heading to the city over August to find out more about their shows. Today we’re chatting with Will Johnston about Love’s A Beach.

Can you tell us a bit about you and your career so far.

Our names are Katie and Will, and we met ten years ago in a school production which we don’t talk about anymore. Where’s the backspace key? School plays aside, Katie is now a writer and producer for BBC Radio 4, and has been nominated for international awards as a documentary-maker. She is also a staff writer on the 3-time-Radio Academy Award winning The Skewer, which was also nominated at BAFTA 2024. Will is a writers’ assistant, currently in the writers’ room of Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated The Diplomat (Netflix). Before that, he script-edited Chivalry, the satirical Channel 4 comedy-drama written by Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan.

All that being said, our finest creative writing currently can be found on both our Hinges.

What is your show about?

Love’s a Beach follows Cyrus and Ben, the first gay winners of a L*ve Isl*nd style reality show. It’s six months on from the show, and they’re 22, in love, and have millions of followers...but when Pretty Little Thing stop calling and Cobham’s local Greggs pick up the phone for a brand deal, they realise their influence may not be at the heights it once was. In an effort to re-inject public (teen)interest, a branding deal with a hotel chain in Dubai seems like the perfect way to turn things around-but as the play progresses, cracks in their relationship begin to show, as it becomes clear the boys have very different priorities. Our aim was to hold up a ring light on what it means to be a young influencer in the spotlight, balancing career, relationships, morals and celebrity.

What was the inspiration for the show and what’s the development process been to get to this stage?

We read about an ex-Love Island contestant who was no longer doing sparkly brand deals but was instead opening a kebab shop in a post-industrial town high street. Our first thought was, let’s go to the kebab shop, followed closely by our second thought which was, let’s write a satire about our western influencer culture in this maddening world of consumerism and celebrity. We’ve only achieved our second aim so far, but we haven’t given up on the first. We took the play to Vault Festival, which we’re forever indebted to, then developed it for a couple of performances at The Drayton Arms in West London, and then a one-stop show at Soho Theatre as part of their Soho Rising festival. And we’re thrilled to now be at Pleasance!

What made you want to take this to the Fringe?

We were flicking through our local gazette one day and read about this little comedy festival called “Edinburgh Fringe”. We’d never heard of it, and it sounded like something that would never take off, but we thought, hey, what have we got to lose?! (Really, we wrote the play with Fringe as our end game. A month run at Pleasance surrounded by comedy was a pipe dream that has now, to our thrill, become actuality).

Apart from seeing your show, what’s your top tip for anybody heading for Edinburgh this summer?

Take people’s flyers! It’s a really hard thing, flyering–we did it for a whole night in Soho and we are both still recovering. So please smile, take the flyer, and go and see some weird, obscure shows. We’re in our spontaneous era now xo

Why should people book to see your show?

It’s the only show where you will learn about both beaver rewilding, and anal douching.

7. When and where can people see the show?

We’re on at the Baby Grand, Pleasance Courtyard, at 12:45pm every day. So perfect to fill theunusual void of post-breakfast, pre-lunch limbo with some satire!