Hushabye Mountain

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.