The debut season of the play in Brisbane was sold out. Photo: David Kelly.
Merrigong Artistic Director Simon Hinton knows a hit when he sees it, which is why he stopped Tim McGarry in his tracks one day in 2021.
Acclaimed playwright Tim McGarry had just concluded a pitch session with the “movers and shakers of the theatre world,” during which he, author Trent Dalton, and the creative team behind Boy Swallows Universe presented a new idea — a stage adaptation of yet another book by Trent, Love Stories.
“Simon runs up and says, ‘I want that play at Merrigong,” Tim says. “He was the very first person to literally put their hand up as we walked out of the pitch.”
After a sold-out Brisbane Festival debut season in 2024, playing to more than 20,000 ecstatic audience members, the NSW Premiere of Love Stories will take place in Wollongong for a strictly limited two-week season. Sydney dates are yet to be announced, and it is anticipated that the show’s calibre will attract a high number of visitors to the region.
Tim says the collection of vignettes about love was “absolutely made for the stage”.
“Catherine Milne, head of publishing at Harper Collins sent me a copy in December 2021 of this book, wherein Trent had spent two months sitting on a busy street corner with his typewriter and asking people to share love stories. She knew, having worked on the Boy Swallows Universe adaptation that premiered at Brisbane Festival, I already had a fantastic working relationship with Trent,” he says.
“What Trent had captured were ordinary Australians remembering and sharing the extraordinary moments in their lives. In many respects those simple moments in our lives – the beginnings and endings of relationships and friendships – are often the most profound. They become these mini turning points, markers of chapters in our lives. They can bring us enormous joy and enormous pain.
“I got to page 63 and thought ‘Wow!’. I texted Trent and said ‘My God, this would make an incredibly moving stage play. He texted back and told me his wife, Fiona Franzmann, was way ahead of me. The very next day, Sam Strong, the director of Boy Swallows Universe called me and said, ‘Have you read Love Stories? It would be perfect for the stage!'”
It seemed inevitable. But unlike the book, the stage adaptation of Love Stories, two and a half years in the making, is not a series of vignettes whose only throughline is the big universal theme of love.
While the creative team were keen to retain the “spirit of the book”, they felt a relationship arc needed to form the “main spine of the play”.
“Our protagonist, a character we refer to as ‘the husband’, is on a journey of discovery, grappling with the age-old question, ‘What is love?’. As he spends his days on a street corner listening to all these stories about life, he questions his own relationship; ‘How can I be a better husband; how can I love and honour my wife and children more deeply?’.
“One of the greatest challenges in creating the adaptation was deciding which stories to use for the play. With over 70 different stories in the original work, we eventually settled on the inclusion of 40 of those stories; ones that best supported and propelled the husband’s journey.”
Simon says the production has struck a rare chord with diverse audiences thanks to its broad relatability.
“It’s a beautifully made piece of theatre, but the thing that really stood out for me when I saw it in Brisbane was the audience reaction, and the authenticity of that reaction,” he says.
“I see a lot of theatre and sometimes people stand and clap and it’s all very polite – but this was an involuntary standing ovation. People were genuinely moved and joyful at the end of the show.
“It’s an unusual piece of theatre in many ways because it’s made not for ‘theatregoers’, it’s made for everybody. When you’re in the audience, it feels like more of a movement about love rather than a show, and as you’re witnessing these stories about love, you’re thinking about what love means in your own life and you become a part of it.”
Trent Dalton’s Love Stories comes to IMB Theatre at IPAC from Thursday 27 February to Saturday 8 March – book via the Merrigong box office.
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