Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Tuesday 28th April 2015
Ray Lawler's play,
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, was first performed in 1955, and is considered an Australian classic. The Theatre Company of South Australia is presenting this current production under the direction of their Artistic Director, Geordie Brookman.
Arthur "Barney" Ibbot and Reuben "Roo" Webber work in Queensland as sugarcane cutters, a seasonal job. In the five month gap between seasons they go south to Melbourne, to the working class suburb of Carlton, to visit Olive Leech and Nancy. Roo gives Olive a 'kewpie' doll, a tradition established when they first met in 1937. It is now 1953, and this year things have changed as Nancy has married a few months before, breaking forever their lifestyle. Olive has invited a neighbour, Pearl Cunningham, to meet Barney and Roo, hoping that she will replace Nancy, and that all can carry on as before.
A 22 year old neighbour, Kathie "Bubba" Ryan, is also there and, having seen these people living this way since she was five, she wishes that she, too, could live like them. Emma Leech, Olive's mother, is also around to stick her oar in, and Johnnie Dowd, a younger cane-cutter who has recently bested Roo in a challenge to see who can cut the most cane, ending with Roo trying too hard and damaging his back, leaving him no longer able to work as a cutter, arrives as a guest of Barney, creating tension.
This is part of what is known as
The Doll Trilogy, along with
Kid Stakes, written in 1975 and set in 1937, telling of the first year, and
Other Times, written in 1976 and set in 1945.
Pearl and Bubba, played by Lizzy Falkland and Annabel Matheson, are waiting for Olive, played by Elena Carapetis, to finish trying on outfits to find one that she feels will please Roo. Carapetis presents Olive as almost childlike in her excitement at the imminent arrival of the two men and the start of their five month lay-off which, to her, is going to be one long party, as usual. She runs to and fro, flounces gaily in the dress she has chosen, and is like a young girl being taken on her first date. Falkland's Pearl is a complete contrast, soberly dressed, somewhat stiff, prim and proper, insisting that she is only there on a visit, with no plans to join in to replace Nancy. Matheson gives us a young woman worldly-wise beyond her years, the result of being in and out of the house during all of her life and seeing how Olive and the others live. There are some superb interactions between the three, and plenty of laughs generated in this first scene as Olive and Bubba poke gentle fun at Pearl. Falkland somehow manages to keep a straight face while delivering lines get some of the biggest laughs of all.
Enter Jacqy Phillips as Olive's mother, Emma, grumbling that somebody has used the vinegar from her cupboard, and making a big deal out of this minor transgression, threatening police action if it happens again. Naturally, another round of laughs ensues.
Matheson is in her first production for the company, having only recently graduated from the Flinders University Drama Centre, but is quite capable of holding her own in the company of the other three, more experienced performers. By the time that Barney and Roo arrive, these four have already drawn the audience into the past, to post war Carlton, a time and place where social mores were drastically different, gender roles well-defined, although already being challenged due to women doing men's jobs during the war, while the men were off fighting, and greater changes were in the air.
The excellent performances do not stop with these four. Chris Pitman, as Roo, and Rory Walker, as Barney arrive, convincingly looking like seasoned agricultural labourers, real men's men, as they used to say. They are not, though, the almost supermen that Olive has painted them to be. Walker gives Barney all of the bluster and bragging on the surface, manipulative more by habit than intention, then gradually revealing the cracks through which we see darker things beneath. Pitman seems, initially, to be what Olive has claimed but, he too, has secrets, the brashness falling away to reveal his insecurities and inadequacies.
The final straw is the arrival of Johnnie Dowd, portrayed by Tim Overton, who is totally believable as the younger, stronger man who was capable of besting the older Roo and replacing him as team leader. Everything is changing and, while the others still treat the girl next door as a child and call her Bubba, Johnnie calls her by her real name, Kathie, acknowledging that she has grown up.
They are all forced to realise that time has gone by and what they had, or believed that they had at the beginning has faded as they have grown older and, we suspect, has not actually been there for some years. They have been in denial but, with Nancy marrying, Barney past his sexual prime, Roo no longer the top dog that he used to be, replaced by Dowd, Pearl analysing the stories that Olive told of the wonderful lifestyle and pointing out that it was more her imagination than reality, the real world has burst in on the fantasy that hey had lived for so long. It comes to everybody as they grow older, physically less able, past the ability to party all night and be fine the next day, slowing down and realising that what is past is past and cannot be recovered. For Roo and Barney it is like a loss of manhood, their confidence going with it as truth is exposed. For Olive, it is traumatic to realise that the lifestyle that she loved is over and can never be again.
The comic aspects at the start have changed to high drama and tragedy, and the marvellous cast have built bit by bit on their characters as we discover progressively more about them and witness the effects that situations and each other have on them. It is no wonder that Lawler's play is so highly thought of, and is studied in schools, as well as receiving regular performances around Australia and the world. In the hands of actors like these, under sensitive direction, the power of the piece is unmistakable and, although a lengthy work, the time flies by and is over in what seems like hardly any time at all.
Seven superb performances directed with close attention to the changing relationships between them all by Geordie Brookman, makes for a great night out at the theatre, something that we have come to expect since became the Artistic Director of the company, along with the chance to see local actors working extensively again.
Photography by Shane Reid
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