'He said yes': Fringe play revived after 14 years to create elaborate poster proposal

Now playwright Molly Taylor and stage manager Sam Thornber are engaged after the producer of Baby Reindeer and Fleabag helped revive an entire show to facilitate the proposal.

Molly first performed her show - Love Letters to the Public Transport System - at the Fringe in 2012 when she met Sam, who was working as a stage manager on another show, both with the National Theatre of Scotland.

When Molly decided she wanted to return to the festival to propose, her close friend Francesca Moody - the producer behind Fringe-to-screen hits including Fleabag and Baby Reindeer - suggested she resurrect the entire play for a one night performance at her Shedinburgh venue to create an excuse to return to Edinburgh.

Molly created a wall of posters for her show saying, "Sam will you marry me?" near the Thistle Street venue where it was originally performed before proposing. The play was performed at Shedinburgh this week.

She said: “Fourteen years ago, I performed the show, which was about a series of romantic heart aches and failures in my life. When I performed it at the Fringe, Sam was also working at that venue on a different show.

The couple met at the venue’s combined press night, at a bar on Thistle Street and “had a Fringe romance”.

“We had the festival of our lives,” said Molly. “It was an uncannily sunny summer, it was one of those months in Edinburgh where everything was sunny. But it was only a brief romance.”

Sam was due to go away on tour.

“I was working and the timing just wasn’t quite right for us,” said Molly. “We felt this just probably wasn’t the right time.”

But a year later, Sam got back in touch.

“He’d come back from touring in Australia and was like ‘I’m ready’,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘yes, that was a good time, let’s see’. And we’ve been together ever since.”

The couple, who now live in London, have a six year old daughter, Alma.

Molly said: “It was always my dream to propose to Sam. I like to be in control of things. I said to him, ‘If I ever want to get married, I’ll let you know’.

“At that time, when we were having that intense, Fringe fling, my face was everywhere on posters for the show all over the city and he was like ‘I’m having a romance with that girl on the posters’. So my dream was to propose to Sam in Edinburgh because it’s a beautiful place and I wanted to put posters up.”

When she confided in Francesca Ms Moody, who runs venue Shedinburgh, which hosts short run performances during the Fringe, she was keen to get involved.

“Cesca, who’s a dear friend of mine, was like, ‘let’s get the original show back’, so I told Sam I’d been invited back to the Fringe,” Ms Taylor said.

“She said, ‘Let’s get Love Letters back and surprise Sam’.”

Molly put up the posters near the bar on Thistle Street where they had first met.

“I said to Sam, ‘What do you think, that looks like a good show?’ He said yes.

“We’ve just had such a golden time in a golden place.”

Sam said: “It was such an elaborate ploy, I can’t believe Molly got away with it and I’m so touched.”