Only heaven knows

Alex Harding

An ebullient and allegorical musical set in the 1940s and 50s. Tim, a teenage playwright, leaves an unsupportive family in Melbourne and arrives amidst the bohemian by-ways of Kings Cross in the summer of 1944 -- after five years of war, women and gay men are enjoying unparalleled freedoms. Tim soon finds love and a new family: Chris his lover, Guinea the tough but big-hearted night-club songstress and proud, effeminate Lana, a poor-man's Robert Helpmann. But the Sydney bacchanal fades as the cold winds of intolerance bring in the Menzies era and Tim and his friends must learn to survive hostility in a time before a visible gay community existed.