Author Trent Dalton recalls being moved to tears when he sat in early rehearsals for the theatrical adaptation of his bestselling novel Boy Swallows Universe.
"I sit in these readings quietly, trying to hide my eyes, trying to not distract these people, because I'm frickin' crying or gasping or being brought back to like 1992 or something.
"I'm right inside that moment again because these actors are so good."
Dalton's semi-autobiographical debut has sold more than 600,000 copies in Australia since its release in 2018, winning its author a clean sweep of the major categories at the Australian Book Industry Awards, as well as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards' New Writing and People's Choice awards.
Combining a gritty crime story with magical realism and a traditional coming-of-age narrative, Boy Swallows Universe tells the story of Eli Bell and his older brother, August, as they grow up amid the small-time heroin trade in 80s Brisbane.
It has been adapted for stage by Tim McGarry (Hitler's Daughter, The Peasant Prince), and premieres this week in a co-production between Queensland Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) and Brisbane Festival, directed by Sam Strong (Jasper Jones, Storm Boy).
The season, which was rescheduled from last year due to the pandemic, has already been extended twice, and Queensland Theatre says it's the biggest-selling show in its more than 50-year history, as well as its most technically ambitious.
Dalton headed to the first night of previews with his family, who inspired a number of characters in the novel.
Eli's mum, Frankie Bell, is based on Dalton's own mother; journalist and love interest Caitlyn Spies is moulded after his wife; and Eli's older brother August is an amalgamation of his three older brothers.
His father, who died several years before the novel was written, inspired the character of Robert Bell.
The novel's depictions of domestic violence, a mysterious red telephone hidden in a secret room behind his stepfather's wardrobe, an alcoholic bibliophile dad and a mum who fought addiction before being jailed for drug-dealing, are based on Dalton's memories from his youth.
That made it difficult for Dalton to hand the story over to McGarry and Strong.
"Those beautiful five people [my mum, three older brothers and wife] trusted me to take care of that story in the right way, and now I had to trust Tim and Sam to take care of that story in the right way as well," Dalton says.
"And I just said, 'Please, don't just honour me, please honour those people.'"
After the first performance, the Dalton clan planned to regroup at the author's home to share a drink on his back deck.
Dalton says: "There'll be this quiet moment at about midnight on my back deck in Brisbane and I'll clink glasses with Mum and go, 'What do you think?'
"And I'm really looking forward to that moment probably more than anything to be honest."
'I knew immediately'
Playwright Tim McGarry approached publisher HarperCollins in 2018 – before Boy Swallows Universe had even been released – looking for books to potentially adapt.
He read the ambitious debut over about two days: "I knew immediately, as soon as I read it … I was completely gripped by the story.
"It is a story about great resilience and it's a story about struggle, and it's a story about forgiveness, but in the end it becomes a love story, and it becomes a story with boundless amounts of hope."
He was convinced that the novel would be perfect for the theatre not just because of Dalton's ear for dialogue, but because of the relationships between the characters.
"I related to those characters. They are beautiful, complex, complicated human beings, and that I think works really well in theatre."
McGarry then pitched an adaptation to Sam Strong, who at that time was artistic director of Queensland Theatre.
Strong had a similarly powerful, instantaneous reaction to Dalton's novel.
"It wasn't just one of the greatest Australian novels I had read, [but] it was something that was already inherently theatrical and it was crying out to be adapted," he says.
Strong didn't just want to program it – he wanted to direct it himself.
With Queensland Theatre on board, McGarry worked on early drafts of the script – even as the novel was becoming a worldwide sensation.
"I began working on [adapting] the novel just after it was published and I didn't have any of the hype from the novel because it hadn't had all those massive sales, it hadn't won the awards that it won.
"It was only just before I finished the first draft that it took off as this extraordinary bestselling work."
Adding theatrical value
Strong explains that the starting point for the adaptation was the creative team's "deep love of the novel".
"But that's the start rather than the end of the process. We see our job as to bring it to life in a way that only the theatre can … [by] adding theatrical value to the story."
For instance, the production uses video, music and stylised movement to depict the magical realism of the novel and the way it interrelates with Eli's experience of trauma – as in the novel's memorable flying car dream.
"Boy Swallows Universe at its core, for me, is a story about the capacity of love to transcend trauma," says Strong.
"We've been able to put the experience of trauma and the overcoming of trauma on stage."
Strong wanted to lean into the "audacity" of the novel – which mixes genres and tones.
"It moves from gritty social realism to fantastical magical realism to cinematic thriller to something that's joyous and a little bit ridiculous," he says.
"We want to go as dark as we can in the treatment of violence, but at the same time we want to also embrace the more fantastical and joyous elements of the work as well."
Set and costume designer Renée Mulder explained to ABC TV's Art Works: "We're treading a fine line between like big, big, theatrical, exaggerated, heightened moments and the very sort of everyday-ness of the world that these characters inhabit."
The novel's narrative voice has been preserved, with Eli Bell (played here by Joe Klocek, recently seen as young Aaron Falk in The Dry) speaking directly to the audience.
McGarry tried to cut the first-person address from a couple of scenes, but quickly decided against it.
"I found I lost that beautiful personal connection that I had as a reader to the book. And that an audience will expect. You want to stay true to the spirit of the novel," he says.
'I had to invite myself'
It's important for Dalton that the stage adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe invites people into the theatre who may not feel that they belong.
The author describes growing up in a housing commission property in Bracken Ridge, in Brisbane's north (a setting carefully rendered in the novel).
"You feel like you weren't invited to access the wonders of the city, to genuinely access art and poetry and literature. You didn't feel invited into that world."
It was only as a 38-year-old, writing the novel in his daughters' rumpus room in snatches of time after work in 2017, that he began to get over his feelings of self-doubt and the deep-seated belief that his family's story wasn't worth telling.
"There was that invisible wall. It's like, don't go turning this stuff into anything artistic because it's not even that worthy.
"I had to invite myself into that world [of art]," he says.
Now, he points to the people from Bracken Ridge and Darra, in Brisbane's south-west, who don't usually see their communities represented on theatre stages, who will be heading to QPAC's Playhouse to see Boy Swallows Universe.
"Everything about this thing is inviting people from that world: everything from the posters, from the look of the characters, from the bloody thongs that they're wearing, the football shorts that the characters are wearing – it's saying, this is something for you."
But he stresses the play has a message that is universal — whether you're part of the working-class Australia of the novel or not.
"Love conquers all, love is the thing that will get you through … You're not allowed to let the hand you've been dealt be your excuse for being a knucklehead.
"I hope they [the audience] walk away, going … 'I feel a bit more hopeful about my world.'"
Boy Swallows Universe runs until October 3 at QPAC.
