Summer of the Seventeenth Doll - Belvoir Theatre

I had the opportunity of going to see the stage play of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler yesterday at the warm and intimate Belvoir theatre in Sydney's Surry Hills and loved it. It is a quintessential Australian piece that resonates on a number of levels and was played out in a tremendous theatre.

Ray Lawler was born in the working class suburb of Footscray, Melbourne in 1921. His major play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, revolutionised the Australian stage. For the first time Australian audiences saw Australian actors taking the leads in a play and saw the lives and language of their times acted out in front of them.

Lawler worked in theatre as an actor, director, artistic director and playwright. In the original cast of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll he played the part of Barney. He is a quiet-spoken man who found the trappings of success unpleasant. He turned his back on the film version of the play and has never seen it. Lawler has been honoured by the Victorian Government and the Melbourne Theatre Company who named their experimental studio after him. More about Ray Lawler can be found at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Lawler

This is Lawler’s most significant play and has become an icon in Australian theatre. Roo and Barney a couple of cane cutters go to Melbourne during the ‘lay-off ’. There they meet Olive and Nancy and they become a foursome staying at Emma’s boarding house. Emma is Olive’s mother. During the first summer Roo wins a doll at a sideshow and gives it to Olive. Then every year when he returns to Melbourne from the cane field he gives Olive another side-show doll. This is the seventeenth year.

The play is set at the moment of change. Nancy has left and chosen marriage and a reliable partner, so Olive invites her friend Pearl to take Nancy’s place and partner with Barney. This upsets the balance of the foursome. But there is a bigger change. Roo is aging and he can no longer out-fight and out-work the younger men. He was challenged by the younger Johnny Dowd and lost. He left the sugarcane fields a broken man and now has to take a labouring job to support himself.

Barney also faces change in terms of disillusionment. Not only has Nancy walked away from him but Roo who he always looked up to as the top man has fallen by the way. Barney and Olive are trying desperately to hold onto the past, the way things were. But just as the dolls are disintegrating into dust so too are their dreams.(Snodger Media)

The Brilliant Cast and crew of this production had many standout performances, but in my mind whilst all of them were exceptional Robyn Nevin still stands above them all. I have seen this woman in many productions, Macbeth was another exceptional performance that still lingers to this day for me. I included a picture of the cast and crew wall, because they were all amazing.