Alex Harding

Harding met his long-time partner David E. Thompson in 1976, and it was not till the end of the theatre season that Thompson finally asked Harding out.[5] On one of their first dates, the two went to a David Bowie concert, where they went home and spent time in a warm tub with some liquor.[5] It was an almost instant connection for the two, and within a few weeks, they had moved in together.[5] The pair spent the next 15 years together before Thompson died due to AIDS in the early 1990s.[1] Harding used his pain and experience with losing a loved one due to AIDS and made a social commentary through the play Blood and Honour.[4]

Harding died sometime in 2022.[1]

Harding, multiple talents meant he had played a part in many musical pieces, musical numbers, and plays for roughly two decades between 1977 and 1997. The list of works that Harding contributed to in that period in both England and Australia are as follows;

• Double Exposure in 1977
• Point Blank in 1978
  • Martin Sherman had been the director of Point Blank, which Harding collaborated on. Point Blank and Double Exposure Harding's contributions were made in collaboration with Alan Pope.
• The Dear Love of Comrades in 1979
  • Noel Grieg directed the play that year, and Harding contributed the music for the production.
• Layers in 1979
  • This was another musical where Harding collaborated with Alan Pope. Their collaboration on the musical that season allowed the London theatre production to be sold out for the entire season.
• Not Quite Sixty Minutes in 1985
  • This was the first work Harding contributed to when he moved to Australia, and it was performed at the Gay Mardi Gras held in Sydney that year.
• Love, Sex and Romance in 1986
• Acid n Toxic in 1987
  • This play was written by Larry Galbraith.

• Only Heaven Knows in 1988
• Blood and Honour in 1990
• Beauty and the Beat in 1996
  • This was a one-man play directed and written by Rex Lay and performed by Harding at the Gay and Lesbian Arts Festival.

• The Reunion in 1996
• Kaleidoscope in 1996
  • These were two plays that were part of a program of four presented at Lookout Theatre, which was a part of the Queer Fringe.

Only Heaven Knows became one of Harding's most significant works. It was a romantic musical comedy set in Sydney, Australia, in two time periods, the first half of the play in the 1940s and the second half in the 1950s.[4][4] Harding received an almost thirty-thousand-dollar grant from the Performing Arts Board of the Australian Council which allowed Harding to collaborate with the Griffin Theatre Company.[4] Griffin's original production of Only Heaven Knows at the Stables Theatre was performed 35 times before it closed in June 1988.[4] The musical later received other productions across Australia including a major 1995 revival which won the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Award for Outstanding Performing Arts Event.

Blood and Honour was first performed in February 1990 at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney and was awarded the United Nations Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Award for Drama.[1] Beyond the significance the play had to Harding, coming his partner Thompson's passing, it commented on societal values and responses to social issues like the AIDS epidemic, the intersection of race and sexual prejudice, and where compassion and perception come into context and complicate the social issues.[4]

In late 2000, Harding relocated back to the United Kingdom where he took up a job in public service. This included coordinating activities for those in retirement and long-term care facilities outside of London. Little has been publicized about the death of Harding, but he passed some time in 2022.[1]