Our play for August was “Summer of the Seventeenth Doll” by Ray Lawler. We chose the play as Ray Lawler recently passed away and we thought it a fitting tribute. It is set in Australia, in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, in the summer of 1953.
Barnie and Roo have just returned from Queensland, where they have been working as sugar cane cutters. This is the period of “the layover”, five months of sex and fun which they traditionally share with two city women, named Olive and Nancy. This has been the pattern of the past seventeen years. As always, Roo has brought Olive a kewpie doll as a present – the seventeenth doll!
But things have changed. Nancy has married, so Olive has invited Pearl Cunningham – a rather hoity-toity woman – to take over as Barnie’s date.
Also on the scene are Kathie "Bubba" Ryan, a 22-year-old girl who has been coveting Olive and Nancy's risqué lifestyle from her neighbouring house almost all her life, and Emma Leech, Olive's cynical, irritable, but wise mother.
The Summer is full of tensions. Roo and Barnie are feeling old. The new-comer Pearl is much less fun than her predecessor. Roo has had a bad season up north. He is broke and is forced to take a humiliating job in a paint factory. His mateship with Barney is under strain following a dispute between them back in the cane-fields.
Roo is tired. He can’t face another season of cane-cutting and he asks Olive to marry him and settle down. But Olive is furious. She wants her old life, her old freedom, back. For her, marriage is the very opposite of life.
In the final scene, the two men leave together, the Summer prematurely ended. And we know that there will be no eighteenth doll. The party is over.
The play was enjoyable to read using Australian vernacular of the era. It is quite intense, covering the breakdown of the relationships. Each character viewed the events from a different direction. Only Pearl and Emma saw that the fun and freedom were coming to an end.
...News just in from Shirley “Our play for September is Strangers on a Train by Craig Warner. It sounds interesting, it’s based on a book by Patricia Highsmith”.
Joy Shirley
Barnie and Roo have just returned from Queensland, where they have been working as sugar cane cutters. This is the period of “the layover”, five months of sex and fun which they traditionally share with two city women, named Olive and Nancy. This has been the pattern of the past seventeen years. As always, Roo has brought Olive a kewpie doll as a present – the seventeenth doll!
But things have changed. Nancy has married, so Olive has invited Pearl Cunningham – a rather hoity-toity woman – to take over as Barnie’s date.
Also on the scene are Kathie "Bubba" Ryan, a 22-year-old girl who has been coveting Olive and Nancy's risqué lifestyle from her neighbouring house almost all her life, and Emma Leech, Olive's cynical, irritable, but wise mother.
The Summer is full of tensions. Roo and Barnie are feeling old. The new-comer Pearl is much less fun than her predecessor. Roo has had a bad season up north. He is broke and is forced to take a humiliating job in a paint factory. His mateship with Barney is under strain following a dispute between them back in the cane-fields.
Roo is tired. He can’t face another season of cane-cutting and he asks Olive to marry him and settle down. But Olive is furious. She wants her old life, her old freedom, back. For her, marriage is the very opposite of life.
In the final scene, the two men leave together, the Summer prematurely ended. And we know that there will be no eighteenth doll. The party is over.
The play was enjoyable to read using Australian vernacular of the era. It is quite intense, covering the breakdown of the relationships. Each character viewed the events from a different direction. Only Pearl and Emma saw that the fun and freedom were coming to an end.
...News just in from Shirley “Our play for September is Strangers on a Train by Craig Warner. It sounds interesting, it’s based on a book by Patricia Highsmith”.
Joy Shirley
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