Summer of the 17th The Doll – An Australian Classic

Peter Pinne looked at the history of Australia’s first internationally successful play prior to its 2008 revival by Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre Company.

In 1955 when Ray Lawler’s Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll tied for First Place with Oriel Gray’s The Torrents, in the Playwrights Advisory Board of Sydney’s full-length stage play competition the theatrical landscape was indeed barren for local product. Outside of the commercial entrepreneurs, the Union Theatre Repertory Company (now MTC), was the only other company offering professional work to actors. Founded in 1953 by Englishman, John Sumner, they played two-week seasons of plays for eight months of the year, September to April.

One of the conditions of the competition was that the Playwrights Advisory Board would assist in securing a first production of the winning play. The Board sent both winning plays immediately to the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

Hugh Hunt, executive director of The Trust, preferred “The Doll,” and agreed to provide a guarantee against loss if a producer could be found. He thought the tryout of the play should be at a ‘little theatre.’

Ray Lawler at the time was the director of the Union Theatre, Melbourne, and on approach from the Playwrights Advisory Board, was reluctant to program his own play, but John Sumner wasn’t.

He scheduled “The Doll” to open November 28, 1955, as part of the UTRC season. This was indeed groundbreaking in itself, considering for the first two years of its life the UTRC had only produced two Australian works, both of them revues.

Lawler was working class, having grown up in the industrial Melbourne suburb of Footscray, with eight siblings. He left school at thirteen and went to work in an engineering plant. At night he wrote plays. One of his earlier plays was optioned, but not produced, by J.C. Williamson’s, another won first prize in a small Melbourne competition, and he had written two pantomimes based on the comic strip Ginger Meggs, which had been produced. After ten years in factories he got a break in Queensland writing revue scripts and acting in Will Mahoney’s variety shows at Brisbane’s Cremorne Theatre.

Opening night of “The Doll” was an historic occasion. The first Australian play for The Trust, and the first Australian play for UTRC. A lot was riding on it. From the moment the curtain went up and the laughs started coming, it was obvious the audience were on side. At play’s end the applause and curtain calls lasted for five minutes. Geoffrey Hutton in The Age said it was “an event worth seeing and celebrating,” while The Argus called it a “stunning success.” And it was. A play about ordinary working-class people that was earthy, raw, funny, violent, and unabashedly sentimental and emotional. Nothing like it had been seen on an Australian professional stage before.

The story is about two Queensland cane-cutters, Barney and Roo, who every year go South, to Melbourne, during their layoff to live it up with their barmaid girlfriends, Olive and Nancy. It’s been one big party for sixteen years, but the seventeenth, is different. Nancy has gone off to get married and been replaced by a newcomer, Pearl, and we watch as the fragility of Roo, Barney and Olive’s relationship’s crumble as each character realizes their youthful dream has passed. Most of the comedy came from Barney and the cranky, but lovable, Emma, Olive’s mother, who owns the Carlton house they live in. Other characters that fleshed out the plot were Roo’s younger rival, Johnny Dowd, and the sweet young girl next door, Bubba.

The UTRC cast, which was directed by John Sumner, featured, Noel Ferrier (Roo), June Jago (Olive), Roma Johnston (Pearl), Carmel Dunn (Emma), Malcolm Billings (Dowd), Fenella Maguire (Bubba), and Lawler himself as Barney. The Trust immediately took up their option and mounted the show in Sydney the following year.

The Sydney press was just as enthusiastic; “Fine play,” said the Sydney Morning Herald, “An Unprecedented success,” claimed The Sun, with the Daily Mirror calling it “a significant night.”

This unqualified praise was repeated throughout the country wherever the play toured. Next stop was London where it opened, with a totally Australian cast, at the New Theatre, April 30th, 1957. “The Aussies bring us the play of the year,” headlined the Daily Express, “It’s a beaut,” said the Daily Herald, and “a play of real people and real values, pulsing with real dramatic gusto,” claimed the Evening Standard. It later won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play of 1957. New York followed but the press, were not as kind, with the New York Times calling it “a commonplace drama written about commonplace people.” The play ran seven months in London, but only three and a half weeks on Broadway. “The Doll” was later produced throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

In 1959 Hecht-Hill-Lancaster released a movie version. With the locale moved to Sydney, and shot in black and white, the movie was criticized for lacking the play’s atmosphere.
In 1977 Lawler revisited ‘The Doll’ characters when he created Kid Stakes and Other Times, which make up The Doll Trilogy. It premiered in a production by the MTC at Russell Street Theatre, February 12, 1977. It was an interesting experiment, but it was thought the two new plays could not stand alone without ‘The Doll,’ and as such their productions have been limited. The MTC production of The Doll Trilogy was later televised by ABC TV.

In 1994 the play was turned into an opera by Richard Mills (composer) and Peter Goldsworthy (libettist). Victorian State Opera premiered the work at the Playhouse, VAC, October 21, 1996.
Richard Wherrett directed the piece. Critical reception was good. Clive O’Connell in The Age said, “…a score that matches the play’s time (1953), reflecting the essential vitality and muted vulgarity of its characters.”

Apart from Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll, Ray Lawler wrote sixteen plays, among them The Piccadilly Bushman (produced by J.C. Williamson’s) and The Man Who Shot The Albatross (produced by MTC).

In its fifty-third year, Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll is still being produced around the world, and is still as relevant today as it was back when it was written. The reasons are simple – it’s a good play and its theme is timeless. As Leslie Rees said in A History Of Australian Drama Volume 1, “Compassion – is Ray Lawler’s quintessential contribution in this play. It is compassion for his characters in their situation that has given the play its world-wide currency.”

The Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll played in a production by La Boite at the Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, and April 30 to May 24, 2008.

TIMELINE:
1955 – Tied for First Place in the Playwrights Advisory Board of Sydney’s play competition.
1955 – November 28 Premiere, Union Theatre, Melbourne
1956 – January 11 Elizabethan Theatre, Newtown, Sydney
1957 – April 30, New Theatre, London
1957 – Publication by Angus & Robertson
1958 – January 23 Coronet Theatre, New York
1959 – December 2 Movie Premiere, Century Theatre, Sydney
1977 – February 12 Premiere The Doll Trilogy MTC at Russell Street Theatre, Melbourne
1978 – Publication by Currency Press
1996 – October 21 Opera Premiere VOC at the Playhouse, VAC, Melbourne

Article originally published in the May / June 2008 issue of Stage Whispers.