In the 1980s and '90s there was a whole raft of gay plays dealing - albeit sometimes with charm and humour, like
Angels in America or
My Night With Reg - with the bleak reality of living through the AIDS pandemic. In more recent years there have been new approaches to the subject, whether it be assessing the legacy of a lost generation like
The Inheritance, or seeing what the disease means to younger gay men like
Undetectable, Jumpers for Goalposts, or the recent
Cruise. But Jonathan Harvey's
Hushabye Mountain dates from 1999, and it consciously attempts to deal with an uncertain period of hope somewhere in between the two: AIDS still dominates gay men's lives and people are being lost to it, but AZT trials are promising a real hope of successful treatment. It's no longer an automatic death sentence but for Danny (Nathan McMullen,) currently in a celestial waiting room somewhere outside the Pearly Gates, it's come just a little bit too late.
