Brisbane Festival and QPAC: Trent Dalton's Love Stories - Review By Daniel Conway

As you walk into the theatre to see Love Stories, the play adapted from beloved Australian author Trent Dalton’s book of the same name, you are greeted by a camera that focuses on the audience and a series of messages from previous audiences responding to the prompt asking them to articulate what they think love is. The responses range from clichés to witty remarks, all of which are earnest and honest. This is the perfect phrase to capture what director Sam Strong and adapter Tim McGarry have produced. Love Stories is an earnest look into the complexity and reality of love. In between all the sentiment and grandeur, there are hard truths, loss, and a profound sense of frustration that come with loving another person.

Love Stories, the original text, is a collection of stories curated by Dalton, taken from real experiences of people on the street. Because of this, the adaptation is a form of verbatim theatre, which requires the production to balance the gravity of telling real people’s stories with the dramatic licence necessary for creating an engaging performance. In this, I feel McGarry and Strong, with additional writing from Fiona Franzerman, have been mostly successful. I say mostly because, while I was engrossed the whole time, I do feel some of the more poignant moments could have been given more time to breathe before tone shifts occurred. The production is frenetic at times, echoing the sense of stories layering over each other in the chaos of a busy city street. These sequences were some of my favourites in terms of stagecraft. Strong’s choice to use the camera lens to track the action, manipulate the images to create shadows and reflections, and evoke memory was perfectly executed. I feel that the integration of live camera work is fast becoming a trend, but as long as it is used in interesting ways, with the right amount of restraint, I am on board.

Another element that I felt was beautifully integrated was the use of dance. The choreography of Nerida Matthaei elevated many segments for me. This was particularly true for the shadow narrative, in which dancers represented the internal lives of the couple at the centre of the story. The movement conveyed so much in a short space of time and coloured our understanding of who these people are. While the production is mostly vignettes of people’s stories linked together thematically, the engine of the piece is the relationship between the characters simply named Husband and Wife, played by Jason Klarwein and Anna McGahan respectively. Klarwein’s Husband is the anchor of the piece; he is a writer sitting on a corner of the Brisbane CBD asking for people’s stories, a facsimile of Dalton and his experience of writing the original text. He has a generous energy on stage, inviting the audience on this journey. However, for me, it was his moments of stillness that made me enjoy his performance most. When he was reacting to the stories, he managed to be so present and helped to keep our focus on the moment at hand. This is a long show for him, and he is on stage moving from one scene to the next, yet never once did I get the sense he was pre-empting the changes. McGahan’s presence served as a sobering reminder of the hard work that comes with love. Contrasting the cheerful optimism, McGahan’s performance is an honest reflection of the reality of domesticity, punctuated by a lighting scheme that was pulled back and more intimate in her scenes. She holds the space beautifully and conveys a depth of character beyond her minutes on stage.

The only other actor with a named role is Rashidi Edward, playing Jean Benoit. Edward has a natural charisma in the role, and as a result, I could not help but liken Jean Benoit to a puck-like figure. Joyful, with a glint of knowing mischief, he opens and closes the show, addresses the audience, and is often there to help transition between concepts. Edward is intensely likeable and tailor-made for this role.The rest of the company plays the many voices whose stories make up the title. Each actor gets a chance to shine, but a few stood out to me. Valerie Bader brought a weight to her monologues that was undeniable. At one point the camera focused on her face in an extreme close-up; her expressiveness and control as a performer were remarkable and captivating. Similarly, Bryan Probets was enthralling, and I was particularly struck by the versatility of his performances. Kirk Page nearly brought me to tears as he embodied the story of a proud Aboriginal man expressing his love and admiration for his mother, and how that love drives him. You could feel how special that was for Page, as his energy in that moment was magnetic. The entire company was excellent, and while these were my stand-out experiences, they only worked because the cast as a whole created a fluid and tightly held performance.

Love Stories works for me because it captures the reality that love itself is not one thing. It is comedy, it is tragedy, it is real, it is soft, it is passionate, it is potential, it is memory. Love Stories succeeds because the cast and crew have worked together to create magic. To answer the question posed to the audience as they walked in, for me, love is small moments, found in the details, in the effort it takes to make something happen. By that definition, Love Stories is a work of love that I am so glad I got to share in.