Fountain & Bourne Lift 1950s Lid on Rock Hudson

Author Tim Fountain and actor Bette Bourne – who previously had an award-winning solo hit with 1999’s Resident Alien, about flamboyant English raconteur Quentin Crisp – have teamed up again for a new play about another gay icon, Rock Hudson (pictured).

Hudson was the ultimate Hollywood hunk in the 1950s, but his career was perpetually under threat from Confidential Magazine, every gay actor’s nemesis. Only one man stood between stardom and oblivion. In Rock, Bourne plays Henry Willson, the man who created Hudson and would do anything to protect his money-spinning protégé.

Co-commissioned by Homotopia and Glasgay!, Rock opens this month at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, where it runs from 13 to 17 May 2008, before visiting Manchester’s Library Theatre (20-24 May) and the Oval House, London (27 May-21 June).

Fountain’s other plays include Julie Burchill Is Away, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and Sex Addict, which he also performed. Bourne’s recent credits include Theatre of Blood, The Vortex, The Skin of Our Teeth and The Importance of Being Earnest, for which he won a Manchester Evening News Award for his turn as Lady Bracknell. Rock is directed by Tamara Harvey.

– by Terri Paddock