Adapting Australian novels for the stage: La Boite Theatre's versions of Last Drinks, Perfect Skin, and Johnno.(Critical essay)

IN the latest expression of its mandate to stage a broadly-defined Queensland, the Brisbane-based La Boite Theatre has turned to adapting local works. This is not new for the theatre--Rosamond Siemon's The Mayne Inheritance was adapted by Errol O'Neill for the 2004 season, and several Nick Earls novels have been dramatised--but 2006 marks the first time that adaptations have dominated a season, with three of five plays based on novels of the same name. These vary significantly: David Malouf's 1975 Johnno, a classic of growing up in war-time Brisbane; Andrew McGahan's Last Drinks (2000), a recollection of the pre-Fitzgerald Inquiry era; and Perfect Skin (2000), another of Earls's comic novels. Given this trend, it is productive to explore the process of adapting a narrative from one genre to suit a second, or to illustrate 'telling the same story in many different ways' (Hutcheon, 'On the Art' 109). Linda Hutcheon argues that in the process of adaptation,

 
   we actualize or concretize ideas; we simplify but we also 
   amplify and extrapolate; we make analogies; we critique or show our 
   respect. [...] Our postromantic valuing of the originary is, after 
   all, a late addition to a long history of borrowing and 
   stealing--or, more accurately, of sharing--stories. (109) 

She maintains that adaptations reinforce 'that there is no such thing as an autonomous text or an original genius' ('Why' 10). Adaptations, then, support Edward Said's comments about the function of literature generally: literature is 'an order of repetition, not of originality--but an eccentric order of repetition, not one of sameness' (qtd in 'Why' 10).

Hutcheon argues for the critical evaluation of adaptations since they are like any literary resource: an eccentric order of repetition. Adaptations have the capacity to extend this order of repetition productively even as they leave 'traces of the adapting interpreter-creator' ('Why' 10). Using the three novels adapted for La Boite in 2006, I examine some of the transformations that adaptation engenders: what is cut, what remains, what is introduced, and what impact those alterations may have. I argue that the adaptations provide an enriched context--in shortened form--which enhances the original novels, even if aspects of the novels are jettisoned for the sake of economy or even interpretation. Further, all three plays present a coherent theatrical framework which focuses on a relatively naive individual who searches for a means of locating and/or defining himself, even though the novel is populated by numerous people and events. While two remain close to the narrative 'source,' one adaptation takes a different trajectory: the play Johnno heightens the function of one strand of the novel's narrative, creating new interpretive possibilities.

Adaptation for the stage is often viewed with the same sort of suspicion as novels adapted for the screen: audiences fear that 'their' version will not be conveyed in the new medium. This is the case even though some, like Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, have become very successful theatre productions. Curiously, adapting a narrative for theatre is frequently seen as 'a consolation prize for a playwright ... when the same stigma doesn't get attached to screen writers' (Sorensen). There can be significant advantages to adaptation: it may, for example, attract audiences who would not have attended theatre otherwise, in the same way that the casting of a celebrity can entice some audience members to visit. This effort to attract audiences is a factor in the selection of adaptations, but La Boite's Artistic Director, Sean Mee, also comments that staging 'stories that come out of the culture allows the audience to participate.... The reason people don't go to the theatre is they think they're going to get an exercise that has nothing to do with them' (qtd in Sorensen). Finally, prior knowledge of a novel offers teachers some assurance that the play is suitable for their students.

While plays that emerge from novels are inevitably compressed in time and space, they often reproduce large portions of the text verbatim as dialogue, preserving the novel's atmosphere, even if incidents do not appear in the same sequence. For instance, McGahan's prologue to Last Drinks begins with an extract from Marvin McNulty's unpublished memoirs:

 
   It was a cataclysm. 
 
   That was the only word for it. Like the fall of Rome, the fall of 
   Troy. Like we'd flown too high and challenged the gods. It started 
   out so small just a whisper, but someone lost their nerve, someone 
   let it slip, and suddenly it was the end. 
 
   People were scattering to the winds. Old friends wouldn't return my 
   calls. And you know what I did on my last night as a government 
   minister? I gathered up my papers and set them alight, right there 
   in my office, let the fire blaze until the sprinklers came on and 
   doused the whole mess. Later, the police arrived, warrants in hand, 
   and found me there amongst the ashes. 
 
   'Take me in, boys,' I said. 
 
   And just watch while this whole fucking town goes up. (McGahan 1)