2024: Holding the Man

 

Photo: Daniel Boud

 Holding the Man by Tommy Murphy, adapted from the book by Timothy Conigrave.  Belvoir St Theatre, March 9 – April 14 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 23

Creatives

Playwright: Tommy Murphy; Original Author: Timothy Conigrave
Director: Eamon Flack; Asst Director: James Elazzi
Set Designer: Stephen Curtis; Costume Designer: Mel Page
Lighting Designer: Phoebe Pilcher; Composer & Sound Designer: Alyx Dennison
Choreographer: Elle Evangelista; Fight/Movement Director: Nigel Poulton
Vocal & Accent Coach: Laura Farrell;
Associate Sound Designer: Matthew James; Aerial Consultant: Finton Mahoney
Community Engagement Coordinator: Thinesh Thillainadarajah
Stage Manager: Luke McGettigan; Asst Stage Manager: Mia Kanzaki
WAAPA Stage Management Secondment: Sam Rechichi

Cast

Tim – Tom Conroy; John – Danny Ball
Ensemble:
Russell Dykstra, Rebecca Massey, Guy Simon. Shannen Alyce Quan



I hadn’t thought previously of Tommy Murphy being in Shakespeare’s realm, but Holding the Man is surprisingly a kind of parallel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  

John/Hermia loves Tim/Lysander despite Father/Aegius’s prejudiced refusal to accept any such relationship.  Although the parallels get a bit messy when adding in Helena and Demetrius, Tim the Drama person and John the Football Captain come together in the rehearsals of a play within this play.

The big difference is that the King and Queen of the fairies are not visibly present but Puck has done his infecting work, and Oberon becomes HIV in a nasty relationship with Titania’s AIDS.

And so the comedy, of which there is plenty in Murphy’s Act One, turns into tragedy in Act Two, in a reversal of Shakespeare’s comic deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe as an entertainment for the audience of nobility, Theseus and Hippolyta.

The other difference, of course, is that Timothy Conigrave’s memoir Holding the Man is real life.  My own grandson is named for the teenage family friend with haemophilia who picked up AIDS from a necessary blood transfusion, dying in 1984.  And despite his comedy, Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died, aged just 11, probably of plague, as he was writing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1596.

The adaptation of Conigrave’s memoir is also interesting for using the device of Tim stepping out of the action on occasion to tell us about what actually happened as the result of what we have just seen acted out.  In this way we see the story written by Tim, reworked by Tommy as a playscript, worked up by Eamon as director, played by Tom as Tim, working with Danny as John, and with Russell, Rebecca, Guy and  Shannen as the other characters – including Juliet who clearly could have fallen in love with Tim from when they played as Juliet and Romeo in Shakespeare’s play – with ‘Tim’ filling in gaps by speaking to us directly.

And, in addition, the characters often interact personally with members of the audience, individually with some in the front rows of this almost in-the-round arrangement, and on a group basis with cheer-leading of us in enthusiastic arm-waving and cheering.

By interval we feel we know everyone as friends involved together in a theatre group, just like Tim’s, or indeed Belvoir’s.  And so then we feel we know John personally, and Tim, as signs of sickness come on.  Then the most awful part is when Tim decides he has to tell John of his past outside their close relationship, and the likely way he and now John have become positive to HIV.

What Murphy has achieved, in this production with such lively directing and choreography, is a play without sentimentality, engaging to watch, and using aerial performance to stylise the most emotional points in the story, giving us permission to understand the depth of the HIV AIDs tragedy in silence as John dies.

As Tim says “The End”,  the silence is broken by instant applause in praise of the actors’ performances – and also for the life and the love between these two.
 

©Frank McKone, Canberra