‘Do you want some candy?’ is a powerful and light performance about that great fear: the child molester ★★★★★

Do you want some candy? (10+) is a particularly powerful and at the same time pleasantly light youth performance about the greatest fear of all young teenagers and their parents: the child molester. As usual, we never get to see the child molester, but it’s about him all the time. What if?

Writer Annet Bremen has three girls of about 10 years old talk to each other and fantasize about their fear of one day disappearing. They cite newspaper reports in which they have read about girls last seen on such and such a street. What would happen to you, they wonder, shuddering and fascinated at the same time, if you were taken in such a white van? They act out kidnappings in a childishly naive way and try to imagine what would happen next. But they don’t get beyond the vague description ‘the things’.

Director Belle van Heerikhuizen previously broached heavy themes such as suicide in her youth work. She keeps the staging sober. The three actresses who play the girls (Adina Macpherson, Jennifer Welts and Marie-Mae van Zuilen) are sitting on a bench. They’re wearing swimsuits and drinking slush. The clever thing is how the makers let the three girls balance on all kinds of boundaries. They are vulnerable and combative, they are playful and sometimes precocious, they are anxious and at the same time it is all very exciting. The infectious interplay of the actresses completes the relaxed atmosphere in which this topic is discussed.