Boy Swallows Universe triumphs at box office with sold out season

It was the most-anticipated show in Queensland theatre history, and now this drama based on a much-loved international bestseller has made history for QPAC and the Queensland-born author behind it.

Across 23 jam-packed days starting on September 3, the annual Brisbane Festival will stage 15 world premieres, including the anticipated production of Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry . Image Supplied escape 29 august 2021 news

It’s the news that isn’t that surprising - Boy Swallows Universe has broken records to become QPAC’s highest selling drama with more than 40,000 people seeing the play over six weeks.

It’s also the best selling show in Queensland Theatre’s (QT) history. The stage version of Trent Dalton’s much loved international bestseller, adapted by Tim McGarry, has packed them in night after night at the QPAC Playhouse and with 850 people every show seeing it over the past six weeks it has made the record books pulling in more than $4 million at the box office.

Actors Joe Klocek, who plays Eli Bell, and Tom Yaxley who plays his brother August, in the secret room with the red telephone , on stage at the Playhouse, QPAC in the theatrical adaptation of Trent Dalton's novel Boy Swallows Universe which is sold out. Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

The season has been extended three times and it will now run until October 9 but the bad news is that if you don‘t have a ticket already you’ve missed your chance. Trent Dalton says he’s ecstatic about the success.

“I haven’t felt this happy since October, 2006, when the Broncos won their last grand final,” Dalton says. “I wrote that story from my heart and soul, addressing everything I loved and everything I feared as a boy growing up in Brisbane, and now the people of this glorious city have embraced that story in the most beautiful way. It’s deeply moving to me.

“It’s a love story ... I just wanted to show the world how much I love my family and how much I love my wife and, you better believe, how much I love this city.”

The stage production takes you, among other places, into a fictionalised version of The Courier-Mail newsroom in the 1980s. (Dalton is, of course, a former staffer). It’s a three-way partnership between QPAC, Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival has been a sensation and QPAC chief executive John Kotzas says it’s all more remarkable than Eli Bell’s great escape from Boggo Road on Christmas Day.

Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe, at Boggo Road which features in his novel and the play - Photo Steve Pohlner

Kotzas says he’s “proud of our city doing the right thing so we could operate at 100 per cent capacity allowing more people to see this show”.

“The love and triumph surrounding this season has certainly made us aware of what a privilege it is to be one of the few major performing arts venues open in Australia right now,” Kotzas says.

QT’s artistic director Lee Lewis says the play was “loved, dreamt about and toiled over for more than three years” before finally making it to the stage under the direction of Sam Strong, the bloke who had the top job at QT before her.

Joe Klocek as (Eli Bell) and director Sam Strong in rehearsals for Boy Swallows Universe at Queensland Theatre. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

“I feel incredibly proud that Queensland Theatre succeeded in getting this beautiful production on stage and that so many people are coming to be delighted, moved and enthralled by it,” Lewis says.

Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina described it as the “shining light of our 2021 program” and though the festival winds up Saturday the play has a couple more weeks to run.

Minister for the Arts Leeanne Enoch says it has been exciting for Queensland audiences to be the very first to experience the compelling stage version of Trent Dalton’s tale of growing up in suburban Brisbane.

“The unprecedented success of Boy Swallows Universe is to be applauded and celebrated,” she says.

There’s a message in there too because though we were the first to see it we won’t be the last. There are plans to eventually to tour the show and with any luck there will be a return seasons at QPAC sometime in the not too distant future. In fact there will have to be. The public will simply demand it.