Hayes Theatre Co revives Only Heaven Knows, the boy-meets-boy musical romance

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This was published 6 years ago

Hayes Theatre Co revives Only Heaven Knows, the boy-meets-boy musical romance

By Elissa Blake

Thirty years doesn't seem like a long time but Sydney in the late 1980s was a very different place. Many who have grown up since would not feel comfortable or welcome there.

When Alex Harding's boy-meets-boy musical romance Only Heaven Knows premiered at the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross in May 1988, Sydney's gay community was in the grip of the AIDS crisis. Thanks in part to the Grim Reaper TV campaign of 1987, homosexuality had become synonymous with illness and fear. Gay-bashings were commonplace.

Hayden Tee, Ben Hall and Tim Draxl in Hayes Theatre Co's revival of <i>Only Heaven Knows</i>.

Hayden Tee, Ben Hall and Tim Draxl in Hayes Theatre Co's revival of Only Heaven Knows.

On the face of it, there didn't seem much to sing about.

But Harding not only told a story of gay life and culture in Sydney, he dared to celebrate its history, depth, resilience and contribution to the life of the city. Only Heaven Knows was, wrote the Herald on the show's debut, "a much-needed affirmation of love and community".

The original production at the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross in 1988 with (back row, left to right) Steve Kidd, Amanda Jones and Paul Hunt, and (front row) Grant Ovenden, John Turnbull, Jacky Phillips and James Bean.

The original production at the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross in 1988 with (back row, left to right) Steve Kidd, Amanda Jones and Paul Hunt, and (front row) Grant Ovenden, John Turnbull, Jacky Phillips and James Bean.Credit: Branco Gaica

Shaun Rennie, director of a new production of Only Heaven Knows being staged at the Hayes Theatre, is too young to have seen that premiere. He is also too young to have seen it when it was revived for a season at the Opera House in 1995. But he has admired it since he was a teenager, he says, thanks to the cast recording featuring David Campbell in the central role of Tim, a 17-year-old who moves to Kings Cross in the 1940s to discover himself and seek a new life.

But before Rennie could accept an offer to direct a new production, he had to convince himself the play was more than a museum piece.

"I had to ask the hard question: does it still speak to an audience?" he says. "The way we receive theatre and what we expect from it has changed so much since the '80s. Then I started reading it and suddenly I was bawling my eyes out. It was a no-brainer."

Only Heaven Knows opens in the war years, when Kings Cross was a magnet for non-conformists of all stripes, and servicemen on the razzle. It's into this world that the bookish, sheltered Tim (played by Ben Hall in Rennie's production) enters. After finding a room with a cabaret artist, Guinea (Blazey Best), he is befriended by the sharp-witted Lana (Hayden Tee), and then meets and falls in love with Cliff (Tim Draxl).

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Part two of the story takes place a dozen years later. The mood has soured. Gay life has been forced back into the shadows. The Menzies era has arrived.

Harding's portrait of gay life in Sydney in the post-war years has parallels with the present day, Rennie believes.

"I think you see something similar now as conservative movements assert themselves," Rennie says. "History moves forward but it's not one happy march to equality. It is always two steps forwards, one step back. By telling this story I want to remind audiences to be mindful that just because we have certain freedoms and liberties now, it doesn't mean they can't be taken away."

Only Heaven Knows also highlights the story of one of Sydney's lost gay icons, Tivoli star Lea Sonia, aka Benjamin O'Reilly, Australia's leading female impersonator from the 1930s until her untimely death in January 1942, when she fell under an Oxford Street tram during the murky wartime "brown-out".

The role is played by Hayden Tee, who returns to Sydney for Only Heaven Knows in between engagements playing Inspector Javert in Les Miserables on Broadway and in London.

"Lea was an amazing performer," Tee says. "She didn't mime, she sang live, and she sounded like a soprano. She had a top C. A lot of people didn't know she was a man."

Tee was also drawn to the show because it is a play about Kings Cross, "a place I've lived in, on and off, for over eight years". "The Cross has always been a haven for creative people and misfits and people who don't feel accepted. But I look at it now and with the gentrification of the area and the lock-out laws, it feels to me like it's losing its edge and its reputation as place of acceptance and community."

Tim Draxl agrees with Rennie that the play's time has come around again. "Nina Simone said you can't call yourself an artist if you aren't reflecting the times and this piece is so relevant now," Draxl says. "Not just here in Australia with LGBTQI rights and marriage equality but worldwide. I mean, look what's happening in Chechnya right now [where reports of an organised campaign against gay men by security forces have emerged in recent months]. It's terrifying to think that gay men in this day and age can be tortured and executed.

"We take a lot for granted living in Australia," Draxl says. "Especially in the inner city. It's a bubble in many ways and thankfully it's getting bigger, but we have to remember that it wasn't so long ago that men were considered mentally ill for loving each other. It's incredible when you think about it."

Only Heaven Knows is at the Hayes Theatre Company, May 26-July 1.

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