Love Stories
“I got your gift. Might be the most beautiful gift I ever got.”
The gift was a sky-blue Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter from Kath, the mother of Trent Dalton’s mate Greg. He told Greg he’d write something special on that typewriter. “Something filled with love and depth and truth and frankness”. He did! He wrote down the words of “random strangers” who “kindly, gently, wildly, courageously, beautifully” told him their love stories.
We got your gift Trent Dalton. Might be the most beautiful gift we ever got. Thank you.
Thank you too, Tim McGarry, for making it into a play. And Sam Strong and the wonderful cast that is sharing with Australia this remarkably intimate stage production that is, once again in Dalton’s own words “a joyous, heart-on-the-sleeve tribute to the wonder of love”.
McGarry – with additional writing by Dalton and Fiona Franzmann – has brought many of the “random strangers” to life. The words are their own and are therefore honest and moving and sometimes funny. They tell them to a “sentimental writer” who listens … and becomes increasingly aware of the frailty of his own love story. This is yet another example of verbatim theatre at its theatrical best.
Sam Strong directs it on a wide stage skilfully cleared and coloured by set and costume designer Renee Mulder who give it the depth to realise Strong’s vision of distance and movement in a busy city – and the people who live and work and relate in it.
As the audience enter they see a sky-blue Olivetti typewriter sitting alone centre stage – then see themselves projected on a huge screen that Mulder uses to frame the action. They fill the screen as the house lights dim. Mulder and Strong have made them an intimate part of the production from the beginning, and that intimacy continues – and becomes stronger.
The camera that captures them is just one of many. Others, operated by cinematographer Craig Wilkinson, provide the imaginative videos that become backdrops to some of the stories. They are interspersed at times with very personal videos filmed by cast member Antony Dyer, who, with his camera, moves cleverly around, between, even up-close to the actors, projecting the images he captures on to the screen, enlarging the intensity of the moment.
Sometimes those images conjure the busy movement of a city street. Sometimes the intimacy of a shared kiss. Sometimes the tenderness of personal joy. Sometimes the agonising pain of loss. Moments like these, thus enlarged, become intensely personal – and reach out individually to each member of the audience – who acknowledges them with a happy smile, or a wry grin … or a quiet tear.
Strong brings together the features of stagecraft that makes contemporary theatre so diverse. Different acting styles; beautiful, stylised movement and dance choreographed by Nerida Matthaei; moments of complete stillness juxtaposed with fast action; gentle humour juxtaposed with poignant pain.
They are performed by a skilled, intelligent cast who act, dance, move from one character to another almost imperceptibly, stand silently, watch tenderly, react sensitively. All of which require cohesion, conviction, trust – and sensitivity. Because the characters they play are based on real people – many of whom will see themselves portrayed, or recognise their loved ones.
Eleven actors take on that task – all experienced, all committed. Jason Klarwein plays the Husband – the “sentimental writer” who listens, question, records – and reflects. Anna McGahan is the Wife, who clings on to love that used to be. Their scenes of real anguish shared by a silent, thoughtful audience.
Rashidi Edward reaches out to the audience with gentle humour as Jean-Benoit Largarmitte, the busker who “was born during the Rwandan Civil War and left for dead under a tree as a baby, and might be the happiest man I’ve ever met”.
Valerie Bader brings warmth and emotion to her different characters, especially Helen Clark from Gunnedah (“that’s Gunnedah not Gundagai”) who regrets chain smoking because it “lost her two years of being kissed by Norm Clark”. Bader’s ability to make Helen Clark funny, direct, sad and wistful is testament to her wide experience and ability to get inside her characters and make them live.
Kirk Page, Hsin-Ju, Ngoc, Bryan Roberts, Will Tran, Jacob Watton and of course Antony Dyer play more of the other characters whom Dalton met on the streets of Brisbane or at his table on the corner of Adelaide and Albert Streets.
Sakura Tomii who made it through each day by writing down “three good things”. Kerry Shepherd whose outward going husband Chris pushed two young boys to safety before being killed himself by a falling awning. Two women who have been friends since kindergarten yet still hug for over thirty seconds because there’s years of friendship and love in the hug …
As they tell their stories other cast members sit and listen … or dance around them in a gentle pas de deux … or rush by them as they move away into the busy city street. Never are they not part of the action. Never does the action lag or the emotion wane.
My companion on opening night, who like me, had read the book and is much involved with theatre, feels “it takes Trent Dalton’s book to a greater level of storytelling, humanity, insight and beauty”.
That’s what happens with good adaptations – and good productions.
Even those who don’t know the book will find little bits of themselves – and those they love – in this gentle, uplifting production based on stories told to a writer who “shut up” and listened to the “heart-breaking, romantic, exhilarating hilarious, tragic and wondrous” wisdoms and secrets that became Love Stories.
Carol Wimmer
Photographer: David Kelly
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