It’s been a hit book and TV show, now this Aussie tale is set for the stage

5 days ago 7

Trent Dalton’s best-selling novel, Boy Swallows Universe, is destined for the stage, with Australian company Global Creatures announcing plans for a theatrical version that could ultimately take the story of working-class brothers surviving a traumatic childhood in Brisbane to Broadway and the West End.

For Carmen Pavlovic, CEO of the award-winning production company behind stage adaptations of King Kong, Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge – as well as arena spectaculars Walking With Dinosaurs and How To Train Your Dragon – the deal with Dalton has been a long time coming.

Author Trent Dalton and producer Carmen Pavlovic have announced plans to bring his novel, Boy Swallows Universe, to the stage.

“I made an approach to [publisher] Harper Collins when I first read the book soon after it came out,” she says. “But they told me the rights weren’t available. I thought ‘damn it, I missed my f---ing moment’.”

Those rights had been secured by the Queensland Theatre Company, which mounted a stage production for the Brisbane Festival in late 2021.

“It was during the pandemic when people couldn’t believe we could even get audiences in,” says Dalton of that production. “We lucked-out by getting a six-week window where people could actually attend the theatre. It was just this amazing little one-off miracle.”

Dalton’s luck has held since, of course, with the Netflix series taking his story – based on his own childhood growing up with a drug-addicted mother and a heroin-dealing stepfather – to the world. And that has, in turn, propelled sales of the novel past the million mark.

“I swear, I thought this story was a bit too weird to even get traction with a wider reading audience, let alone a theatre audience, and then a TV audience,” says Dalton, a former journalist. “But it just keeps surprising.”

The latest twist took place about 18 months ago when he and Pavlovic met for lunch to talk about other things they might work on.

“I was thinking, this is a career highlight,” recalls Pavlovic. “I said to Trent, ‘I’ve got to stop you talking. I just have to tell you how much I love Boy Swallows Universe’. It was a very organic conversation about what I think lends itself to a theatrical adaptation.”

When Harper Collins got in touch to say the stage rights were now available, she adds: “We jumped right in – and here we are.”

There’s much work to be done before BSU hits the stage – so much work, in fact, that there isn’t even a timeline yet.

Dalton will be involved but will mostly leave it to others to bring their visions to his story. “I will be the cheerleader, and I will be reading every line, but I don’t want to be the writer,” he says. “It’s too close [to me] and I think I’d only slow things down.”

And if the team takes the story in directions Dalton hadn’t originally envisaged, will he be OK with that?

“Absolutely,” he says. “If it’s a direction that excites me and feels true to that kid [his fictional alter-ego, Eli Bell] at 12, I am open for anything, if not more excited about it.”

One thing Pavlovic is certain about is that her Boy Swallows Universe will not be a musical. The other is that she wants to build something that will travel to the biggest stages around the world. “My interest in it is the humanity and, I believe, universality of the story.”

Global Creatures has had success exporting original Australian IP to the world’s biggest stages. Moulin Rouge!, adapted from Baz Luhrmann’s movie, won 10 Tony Awards on Broadway and an Olivier in London. Its 11 productions globally have amassed box office takings of $1.7 billion and counting, Pavlovic claims.

Over the past decade, Australian theatre more broadly has begun to make a serious impact internationally – think writer Suzie Miller (Prima Facie), director Kip Williams (The Picture of Dorian Gray), producer Michael Cassell (a powerhouse at home who has expanded to both Broadway and the West End). And Pavlovic is convinced that, with the right moves, there could be much more to come.

“We’re starting to get recognition internationally that we do have that kind of talent pool and are capable of developing that level of work,” she says.

But it’s expensive to develop for the world stage – King Kong, which Global Creatures developed in Sydney, debuted in Melbourne, and ultimately took to Broadway – represented a $33 million journey to its first opening night (and many millions more to retool it for its New York debut).

Which is why Pavlovic has lent her voice to a campaign for a 40 per cent offset for the development of new works for theatre, similar to the one available to film producers.

“This is a once-in-a-generation moment,” she says. “It would be a tragedy for us to miss it because everything’s in place, and this could help catapult us that bit faster to where we really need to and can be. I think we are poised.”