The ghost of “patient zero”, who allegedly first brought AIDS to North America - materialises and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural history Museum, is trying to organise an exhibition about the disease for the museum’s “Hall of Contagion”.

A rip-roaring, in-your-face musical about AIDS starring a gay ghost—the infamous Quebecois flight attendant “Patient Zero”—who seduces a 170-year-old sexologist, the Victorian adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Combining influences as diverse as Bertolt Brecht, Busby Berkeley, Michel Foucault, and Barbra Streisand, director John Greyson exposes the greed, homophobia, and careerism underlying both media and scientific responses to the AIDS epidemic. Outrageously funny, with eye-popping sets and tuneful musical numbers, Zero Patience manages to celebrate the anger as well as the compassion and love in the gay community.