An ebullient and allegorical musical set in the 1940s and 1950s, telling the story of one young man's discovery of love and affection in the big city. Tim, a teenage playwright, leaves an unsupportive family in Melbourne and arrives admidst the bohemian by-ways of Kings Cross in the Summer of 1944 - after five years of war, women and gay men were enjoying unparalleled freedoms. Tim soon finds love and a new family: Cliff, his ocker lover; Guinea, the tough but big-hearted nightclub 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. At the end of this musical odyssey, Tim must choose between his love and his own theatrical destiny.