Adaptor: Tim McGarry – Director/Dramaturg: Sam Strong – Assoc. Director: Ngoc Phan
Choreographer, Movement Director, Intimacy Co-ordinator:
Nerida Matthaei
Set & Costume Design: Renee Mulder – Lighting Design:
Ben Hughes
Video Design: Craig Wilkinson – Composition & Sound
Design: Stephen Francis.
Canberra Theatre 24 – 27 September 2025.
Opening Night performance on 25th September
reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.
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| Jason Klarwein - cameraman, Antony Dyer -Bryan Probets - Ensemble - in Trent Dalton's Love Stories. |
Part dreamscape, part musings on his own marriage, Trent Dalton’s Love Stories is a stage adaptation by Tim McGarry, Fiona Franzmann and Dalton himself of his best-selling book which resulted from two months in which Dalton famously sat on a street corner in Brisbane asking strangers to tell him a love story.
Sam Strong’s remarkable staging embraces a surprising amount
of dance, choreographed by QL2 Alumni Nerida Matthaie, in which characters, words
and movement entwine as a ballet with words in which a succession of stories becomes
a rapturous idyll illustrating the many forms of love.
Only Jason Klarwein and Anna McGahan as characters Husband
and Wife, (presumably Dalton and his real-life wife, Fiona), and Rashidi Edward,
as a delightfully whimsical character called Jean Benoit, perform continuing
roles.
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| Jason Klarwein - Rashidi Edward - Hsin-Ju Ely - in Trent Dalton Love Stories. |
Elsewhere, Valerie Bader, Hsin-Ju Ely, Joss McWilliam, Ngoc Phan, Bryan Probets, Will Tran, Jacob Watton between them portrayed the myriad of real-life characters and their stories, drawn from the interviews conducted by Dalton during his two-months street corner sojourn.
Two of the couples whose stories are featured in this
adaptation were in the Canberra Theatre audience on opening night, and judging from
the shrieks of laughter and murmurs of recognition from surrounding audience
members, it was obvious that many were identifying with the experiences being
portrayed.
Of course, there are many other elements of Strong’s staging that make it so compelling. Among them, the use of a huge video screen to capture audience members settling into seats pre-performance, and their responses to their previously submitted definitions of love.
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| Will Tran - Jason Klarwein - cameraman Antony Dyer in Trent Dalton's Love Stories. |
Then, during the performance this screen was utilised to display stunning real-time close-ups of the actors captured by an on-stage video-cameraman, Antony Dyer, revealing the affecting connection of the actors to their characters. So engrossing were these images that it was easy to forget the skill of the actors in creating a myriad of characterisations with only minimal use of props or costume changes.
The only disappointment on opening night was that not all the
actors had adjusted their performances sufficiently to the size of the Canberra
Theatre auditorium. Their over-reliance on their personal mikes to capture what
they were saying, resulted in much of Dalton’s dialogue being lost, which
combined with the peripatetic staging, made it difficult to keep track of some
of the stories.
Hopefully this will have been corrected for later performances, because even with this blemish, judging by the vociferous applause at the end of this performance, many in the audience had identified strongly with the stories represented in this superb production.
Jason Klarwein - Will Tran - Anna McGahan - Bryan Probets in "Trent Dalton's Love Stories".
Images by David Kelly
This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au