'Some Kind of Paradise' - narrative action and generational sexualities in Max Vernon’s musical The View Upstairs (2017)

This chapter responds to Ken Plummer’s call for ‘acts of narrative hope’ (Plummer 2019: 161), specifically by examining how musical theatre uses Jack Halberstam’s concept of ‘queer time’ (2005) to connect present audiences with past events that specifically look for moments of hope in queer trauma. The chapter utilises Plummer’s theory of generational sexualities (2010) to examine how The View Upstairs (2017) allows a cross-generational connection between queer characters encountering private, public and universal tragedies that continue to reverberate in queer life today. This chapter concludes by returning to Plummer’s work on narrative power, and the bridging of the gap between the 1970s characters and the modern audience.