Seventeen years since it first appeared on Belvoir’s stage, Tommy Murphy’s devastating love story Holding the Man returns this month, marking 30 years since the death of original author Timothy Conigrave from Aids-related illness, aged 34.
Conigrave’s memoir, published in 1995, holds a special spot within the gay Australian psyche, one of the first – and still one of the most emotionally potent – portrayals of living and dying through the Aids crisis in this country. Murphy’s play, too, had a massive impact: in the 12 months following its premiere at Sydney’s Griffin theatre in 2006, it transferred to Sydney Opera House and then Belvoir, eventually becoming a film.
