​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

In my last report of our Group, it was clear that the relationships between members of “The Doll” characters were breaking down.  Barney and Roo have a huge fight which breaks up house furniture and the Dolls of 17 years.  Pearl walks out permanently as she is not prepared to behave in the manner of previous girl friends.  Roo wants to know whose fault it is for the “dust up” and is promptly told by Emma that it is no one’s fault, it is that he and Barney are simply too old for this kind of conduct.
 
Not only that, young Johnny Dowd is the new cane cutting “gun”.  Dowd and the gang decide to head to Mildura in the off season and Roo won’t go and Barney decides to stay with Roo as they are mates.  Roo reluctantly accepts this. Olive leaves in a drunken state.
 
The final scene is extremely emotional as Barney puts his hand on Roo’s broad shoulders; the men look into each other’s eyes and walk out of the house together. Several of our Group shed a tear at this stage & some others were very touched by the ending – including the convenor !!
 
Our next reading is “Winter Glory” by Peter Cloke.  This play is one in a series involving the redoubtable quartet of Dame Beatrice and her lodgers - Nan, Hattie and the Brigadier - who feature in earlier comedies by Cloke.  This play may well be the last in the series because, in an unfortunate slip-up in the quartet’s scheme to put a pathetic pet out of its misery & to help an ageing actress fade away at a peak of happiness,  they dispatch themselves heavenwards as well.
 
Another fun play for our Group

Our Group is currently having a wonderful time reading an all time classic Australian play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler.
 
At the risk of under-estimating the play, it is about growing up and growing old and failing to grow up.  Set in the ‘50s, it is a crucial period in the development of the Australian identity.  It was a time of post-war reconstruction and immigration, of materialism, a wool boom, of suburban comfort and conservatism.  It was also a time new skills were needed to administer our new found prosperity.  Industry began to answer the call of art, literature, music and drama; and among others Ray Lawler emerged. 
                          
The play, set in the Melbourne suburb of  Carlton,  details the events in the lives of six central characters in the summer of 1953.  The structure of the play is such that the nature of these characters and their situation and history is not revealed immediately, but rather gradually established as the story unfolds.  By the end, the story and all its facets have been indirectly explained.
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The summer that the story spans marks the 17th year of an annual tradition in the lives of the characters, wherein two masculine sugarcane cutters, Barney and Roo, travel south to Melbourne for five months of frivolity and celebration with two city women, Olive and Nancy (Roo bringing with him as a gift for Olive a kewpie doll hence the name). One of the women, Nancy, had apparently married some months ago.  In her place Olive has invited Pearl Cunningham to partake in the tradition. The other women present in the play are "Bubba" Ryan, a 22-year-old girl who has been coveting Olive and Nancy's lifestyle from her neighbouring house almost all her life, and Emma Leech, Olive's cynical, irritable, but wise mother.
 
As the play progresses, it becomes obvious that, for many collective reasons, this summer is different from others; it is full of tensions, strains to recreate lost youth, and from what is said of previous years, not a fraction of the fun that others have been.  Steadily things become worse; Roo is revealed to be broke and is forced to take a job in a paint factory.  He is disillusioned with his age and weaknesses, while relations between Barney and him are in doubt, due to a recent question of loyalty.  The situation is agitated in part by Pearl's uptight indignation and refusal to accept the lifestyle she is being presented with as "proper" or "decent".
 
Our group will read the final sections of the play at our next meeting so all readers will have to wait until the next Bulletin to discover the climactic outcome.  
 
Members of our group are enjoying the various characters they play and some really fit into the characters they read.  It is a fun play read by a fun group.

This is a handout for 'prereading' if you have the time ... 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll'.  It is the full article - the handout given out in class was unfortunately missing a page.  

Here are some other resources which you might enjoy...