This sweet anthology of Brisbane lovers, adapted from Trent Dalton’s book of the same name, is an earnest celebration of love in many forms.

Dalton spent a month in 2021 sitting outside Brisbane’s King George Square bus station with an Olivetti typewriter and a sign that read “Sentimental writer collecting love stories”. In 2024, the typewriter and the sign appear onstage for Love Stories, a work led by the same creative team that delivered the big-hearted stage adaptation of Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, Brisbane Festival’s centrepiece in 2021.

Trent Dalton’s Love Stories. Photo © David Kelly

Adapted by Tim McGarry and directed by Sam Strong, with Associate Director Ngoc Phan, Love Stories condenses many of the book’s love stories into 100 minutes. Trent Dalton and his wife, Fiona Franzmann, also contributed to the adaptation, adding a throughline of Husband and Wife, struggling with their marriage, as an anchor to all the other stories. This isn’t in the book but it is crucial to the balance of the stage adaptation. It shows us the harder, messier side of love – the arguing, the compromising, the vulnerability and willingness to grow.

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