Adapting Australian Novels for the Stage: La Boite Theatre’s Version of Last Drinks, Perfect Skin, and Johnno

Abstract

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).