The theatre company CODA (Company of Dramatic Arts) closes Qtopia Sydney’s 2025 season with a luminous revival of Jonathan Harvey’s masterful play, BEAUTIFUL THING, a work that feels not only timeless but urgently contemporary. Director Finn Stannard, affectionately calling the show “Heartstopper in the 90s”, has crafted a production that delicately balances rawness with warmth, reminding us that queer love stories are as necessary now as when the play first premiered in 1993.
Set in the late ’90s on a South London council estate, the world of BEAUTIFUL THING is one shaped by poverty, domestic volatility, and the constant threat of being caught; caught in your truth, caught in danger, caught between who you are and who the world insists you should be. Bullying, harassment, and the suffocating pressure of adolescence form the daily backdrop for Jamie (Jake Walker) and Ste (Max Dÿkstra), two boys who learn to navigate these forces with little help and even less safety. Yet CODA’s production refuses to let the darkness dominate. Instead, it reveals what can grow in the harshest soil: tenderness, resilience, and the quiet courage to love.
Walker and Dÿkstra bring aching vulnerability and authenticity to Jamie and Ste, charting a relationship that begins almost by accident born from necessity, fear, and proximity and blossoms into something defiantly beautiful. Their performances capture the fragile, electric pulse of first love, made all the more moving by the obstacles surrounding them. It’s a love story forged in the shadows, yet brimming with hope.
The supporting ensemble enriches the world in unexpected ways. Willa King’s Sandra is a force of nature chaotic, hilarious, fiercely loving, she anchors this ship steadfastly, whilst Poppy Cozens brings Leah’s brashness and loneliness into poignant balance, transforming the “weird neighbour” into a figure of surprising depth. Michael Hogg’s Tony adds gentle ballast to this makeshift community, reminding audiences that family is something we build as much as inherit.
Stannard’s direction makes clear his personal connection to the narrative. Having first encountered the film adaptation while still closeted, his approach radiates a deep understanding of the play’s emotional stakes. His vision lifts the humour and humanity without softening the danger. The fear of exposure, the violence at home, the pressure to hide these remain real and pressing. And yet the production never loses sight of the central truth: queer love is resilient, joyful, and worth fighting for.
The creative team strengthens this vision with design choices that feel both grounded and poetic. Laila McCarthy and Zoe Young’s set evokes the bleakness of working-class Britain without reducing it to stereotype. Lighting designers Raphael Gennusa and Liam Faulkner-Dimond sculpt the stage with shifts between stark realism and tender glow, guiding us through a world where hope flickers but never fades.
What makes CODA’s BEAUTIFUL THING so powerful is the interplay between its themes their ongoing relevance, their emotional immediacy, and the way they resonate with today’s queer experiences. The threats Jamie and Ste face are not relics of the 1990s; they echo painfully into the present. And yet the play’s message remains defiantly optimistic: that love, freely chosen and freely given, can be radical, transformative, and profoundly human.
By the final moments, the production offers a vision of what could be possible if we simply allow ourselves to love and be loved without fear, regardless of gender, circumstance, or expectation. It is a story of queerness, community, and the families we create for ourselves, told with honesty, humour, and heart.
BEAUTIFUL THING is exactly that: tender, fierce, and shimmering with hope.
A beautiful thing indeed.
BEAUTIFUL THING plays at The Loading Dock Qtopia Sydney until the 13th December 2025.
Tickets at https://events.humanitix.com/beautiful-thing
