Hope Mill Theatre has announced it will work with Stream.Theatre to stream a new online production worldwide of Hushabye Mountain by acclaimed writer Jonathan Harvey.
Directed by Nick Bagnall, this online production will star Matt Henry as Lee, Jodie Prenger as Beryl, Layton Williams as Connor, Nathan McMullen as Danny, Amy Dunn as Lana and Harrison Scott-Smith as Ben.
Hushabye Mountain will be streamed live on Saturday 5th June, and then available online on 11th, 12th and 13th June 2021 (All 7:30pm) and 18th, 19th and 20th June 2021 (All 7:30pm with a 2:30pm Saturday Matinee). Hope Mill Theatre will be partnering with the following venues to show the production throughout the run: The Turbine Theatre, Sheffield Crucible, Liverpool Everyman and
York Theatre Royal
Writer Jonathan Harvey said: ‘I am so thrilled Hope Mill, one of my favourite theatres, are mounting this revival of Hushabye Mountain. As we move through this current pandemic with vaccine shaped hope on the horizon, I am reminded of a different pandemic, and the time when combination therapies started being trialled and seemed to work for people with HIV. It felt like one day my friends were dying, the next they were surviving. The play is about a group of friends in that moment of time, back in the 90s, coping with the shifting landscape. I am also chuffed that Nick Bagnall, who played Ben in the original production, is directing. We’ve got a top cast and I can’t wait for new audiences to discover this piece.’
Danny is a young man, waiting to be let into heaven. There seems to be some difficulty about it, but Judy Garland reassures him as she passes by in a boat full of stars. Away from the dreamlike and unexpected version of the afterlife, the people who were closest to Danny struggle with his death from AIDS. His partner Connor is flattened by grief, and groping awkwardly towards a new relationship. Connor’s brother Lee and his wife Lana, who was Danny’s best friend, find their new marriage overshadowed by the hole Danny’s absence has left in their lives. And Danny’s mother Beryl, who had kept in contact via increasingly paranoid letters after Danny’s father disowned him, is now in a mental hospital and being updated by Judy Garland about her son’s progress towards heaven.
First performed in 1999 at the Lyceum Theatre, Crewe, Hushabye Mountain reveals a world that has learned to live with AIDS. It is a world full of love, pain, laughter and friendship, where drugs in their various combinations are exhilarating, destructive, costly and even life restoring.
Tickets are on sale and available from www.hopemilltheatre.co.uk, partner venue websites and www.stream.theatre
