Much more than teenage kicks in Holding the Man

10 April 2012

The trouble with bold statements of fact concerning this play is that they are more likely to deter potential audience members than have them racing for the booking details at the end of this notice. A portrait of a gay relationship in Australia from the 1970s to the 1990s is the brass-tacks description, but this fresh, frank and funny drama is much more, above all a wrenchingly moving love story I defy anyone with a pulse not to relate to.

Tommy Murphy has shaped a commendably elegant work from the eponymous bestselling 1995 memoir of actor/writer Tim Conigrave, which detailed with ringing honesty his long-term relationship with John Caleo. We watch Tim and John (Guy Edmonds and Matt Zeremes, both terrific) meet as teenagers at an astonishingly understanding Catholic boys’ school and follow them and their changing hairdos through university and sexual experimentation, until the spectre of Aids starts to hover and the mood of the evening shifts markedly.

It’s all teenage kicks initially, as the larks of the puppyishly smitten pair are reflected in playful scenes that bound energetically through the years. Fortunately Murphy, director David Berthold and the superb four-strong supporting ensemble, including Kath and Kim’s Jane Turner, fare just as well in the bad times as the good.
Until July 3. Box office: 0844 871 7632. holdingtheman.com

Holding The Man
Trafalgar Studios
Whitehall, SW1A 2DY

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