Holding the Man (NHB Modern Plays)

Based on the award-winning memoir by Timothy Conigrave, and adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Tommy Murphy, Holding the Man tells a remarkable true-life love story that speaks across generations, sexualities and cultures. The course of teenage love rarely runs smooth, but it is a white-water adventure if you are secretly gay in an all-male school in 1970s Melbourne with a crush on the captain of the football team. Against the odds, Tim and John develop a relationship that, for fifteen years, survives everything life throws at it - the separations, the discriminations, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses - until the only problem that love can't solve turns up to part them. 'Tommy Murphy is a bewitching playwright of startling originality' - Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, Artistic Directors of Sydney Theatre Company 'fresh, frank and funny... a wrenchingly moving love story I defy anyone with a pulse not to relate to' - Evening Standard 'Compelling, wrenching... unflinching, devastating, moving and funny' - Sydney Morning Herald