Andrew Bovell returns to Perth with play that became hit film Lantana

Speaking in Tongues, the stage play that was later adapted and transformed into the 2001 film Lantana, opens at the Heath Ledger Theatre this week.

For playwright Andrew Bovell, it’s the work that ultimately led to opportunities in Hollywood and a successful screenwriting career, and brings him back to his home town.

He has lived away from Western Australia for more than 40 years, but still returns regularly. 

“I do come back a lot because I do feel a sense of belonging here,” Bovell, who lives in rural South Australia, told Jo Trilling on ABC Radio Perth.

“I grew up in Grant Street [in the beachside suburb of Cottesloe] … and every time I pass it, I look at the house I grew up in and just have such a kind of nostalgic memory of it all,” he said.

Andrew Bovell, left, speaks with director Humphrey Bower during rehearsals for Speaking in Tongues. (Supplied: Daniel J Grant/Black Swan State Theatre Company)

He credits his childhood in WA, born in Kalgoorlie and following his father’s job as a bank manager around the Wheatbelt, for helping him become a writer.

“Western Australia’s landscape, both its wheatbelt, its interior, but also the Indian Ocean, where I spent my adolescence, were very formative and influential elements of my life,” he said.

“I was the fourth child. I was the only boy.

“I had these three older sisters who were doing their own thing. And I think I just had a lot of time to fill.

“And out of that time came an imagination. And I can remember as a kid making up stories.”

Relationships in crisis

Speaking in Tongues, like many of his works, is about a series of couples whose relationships have run into serious trouble, set against the mystery of a missing woman.

It’s a theme he’s returned to over and over in his plays.

“I don’t consciously set out to write about how men and women try to love each other and often mess it up,” he said.

“I’m actually quite happily married, and I’ve been married for 30 or 40 years or something. So I don’t know.

“But look, I do love that subject. How do we manage our emotional lives, both within relationships, but more broadly within the family?”

Humphrey Bower speaks to the actors during rehearsals for the new production of Speaking in Tongues. (Supplied: Daniel J Grant/Black Swan State Theatre Company)

Bovell changed and restructured the story so that the play, while telling the same story, is different from Lantana, and all nine characters will be portrayed by just four actors, taking different roles.

“It’s a very complex play for actors because there’s a lot of lines and they’ve got to say them at the same time and intercut,” he said.

“There’s a lot of kind of technical stuff, but [it’s a] lovely cast, really strong.”

He credits this play and the film Lantana with transforming his career, and also how people saw Australians and Australian stories, in a way that surprised him.

“At the time, there hadn’t been many Australian films that treated us like adults,” he said.

“You know, it came out of that period of Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom, Priscilla, The Castle, all these larger-than-life portraits of Australia.

“Then Lantana came in, kind of under the radar and went, hey, we’re quite a contemporary, sophisticated kind of people as well, and audiences responded to that in a way that I hadn’t quite expected.”

Lantana’s lead actors, Kerry Armstrong and Anthony LaPaglia, in a scene from the 2001 film. (Supplied: Lions Gate Films)

A career between stage and screen

While he’s back in Perth to see the Black Swan State Theatre Company’s rehearsals and then the opening, he’s also working on the other projects that sustain his career — screenwriting and adaptations.

He’s currently scripting a Liane Moriarty novel, Here One Day, for television, and said it was a relief when somebody else had written the story for you.

“[The book] is another whole world for me, but still in that world of relationships, and yeah, it’s very interesting,” he said. 

“It’s a bit liberating because somebody’s done a lot of the work for you. You’ve got a 500-page book there.

“When you’re doing it from scratch, you’ve got to dig much deeper to find the answers.”

Bovell said he was happy to have both mediums to work in, but said he would always return to where he started — writing for the stage.

“I’ll get very kind of anxious if I’m not also engaged in a piece of theatre because it keeps you honest. It’s a very demanding form. I love it,” he said.

“And I feel a lot more freedom as a writer in the theatre.”