Scents and sensibility

Simon London and his fellow actors will have perfume as a prop.

Anyone who has seen the deliciously funny film Adaptation will know what Auckland director Colin Mitchell has been up against. In that movie, screen writer Charlie Kaufman fictionalises himself struggling with the seemingly unachievable task of adapting Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief for the big screen.

"The script I'm starting, it's about flowers," says Kaufman's on-screen self. "No one's ever done a movie about flowers before. So there are no guidelines."

And so, too, for Perfume, the best seller by Patrick Suskind. It's about scent. And Mitchell has taken on himself what might seem the unlikely task of adapting it for the stage.

"It is a little like Adaptation," says Mitchell. "It's an impossible novel to adapt."

Yet adapt it he has. Retitled The Scentless Apprentice - from a Nirvana song also inspired by the book - it opens at the Silo Theatre today as part of the AK05 festival. It is a distillation of Suskind's tale of an infant born in the slums of 18th-century France with one unique gift, an absolute sense of smell.

As a boy, he lives to make sense of the reek of Paris, and apprentices himself to a leading perfumer. He learns from him the art of blending oils and herbs to create perfumes.

But the boy's talent leads to obsession, and he becomes possessed with encapsulating the smells of objects, things such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood.

Then one day, as the book's flap puts it, he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more bizarre and ultimately shocking quest to create the ultimate perfume - the scent of a beautiful young virgin girl.

The New York Times called the book a fable of criminal genius. But murder and depravity pretty much covers it, which is why it is really a cult novel, Mitchell says.

"As soon as I mention to people that I'm doing an adaptation of it there is real interest. I hope there's not a preciousness to it. But everyone seems to really like the novel."

Still, the adaptation seems bold. The main character is an uncommunicative sort, a bit of a shell, not particularly charismatic. And there's the idea of dramatising smell. Yet this seemingly mad proposition was what fascinated Mitchell.

"The thing that really attracted to me was that use of scent. I cannot think of a single other medium - except perhaps an art installation - where you can use scent.

"I think there is going to be a film version of it, but that won't have the visceral element, which the book manages with beautiful description. Hopefully, we're going to make it that much more immediate by using scent."

Does this mean we are in for something like scratch and sniff theatre?

"I think it will be an interesting challenge. The first thing that happens is that the boy has a horrific birth and is immediately taken to priests for adoption, so there's incense there. And then he's at the perfumery, so I imagine we'll have a pretty wide variety of scents there."

Mitchell, who has worked with the Auckland Theatre Company's experimental Second Unit in the past, has a track record for transferring books to the stage. He adapted Lolita in 2003 and Catcher In the Rye in 2002. The young director says one thing about adapting is that people know what they are letting themselves in for.

"Even if it's not a straight adaptation, the idea is the star of the show to some extent. Perfume the novel is obviously going to be the star of the show.

"With the way we are working now, with the actors coming up with their own stuff, I find it a lot more rewarding than working from a straight text. It's a nice halfway point between coming up with something completely original and working with a predefined script."

Both Lolita and Rye were literal adaptations, however. The Scentless Apprentice is an abstract.

"It's inspired by. I'm lucky to be working with actors who are good devisers, so I think it's going to be quite different from the novel, though it will have the same essence.

"I guess it's a case of distilling the novel, then working out the structure and taking a few liberties, so the story flows more easily for a theatre show, and getting the actors to improvise within a set structure."

Mitchell has given it a lightness. After adapting it to a script, the play has been restructured and he and the cast, which includes Simon London, Phil Brown, Ben Crowder and Margaret-Mary Hollins, have been improvising from there.

"It was tricky finding the right lead. London was a good pick because he isn't a familiar face at the Silo, so people will be able to susPend disbelief," Mitchell says.

"There seems a vitality to the show already. Going into the rehearsals I imagined it would potentially be quite a dry production but the way rehearsals have gone and the life the actors have brought to it, it seems like it's going to be quite a charismatic, bombastic show."

Performance

*What: The Scentless Apprentice
*Where and when: Silo, Mar 9-26