Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

In its closing week, Ray Lawler’s timeless Australian classic, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, is powering on at Brisbane’s QPAC. Being performed in the smaller Playhouse, the audience is thrust into the lives of Olive, Roo, Pearl, Cathy “Bubba” Ryan and Barney in an intermit production of this timeless Australian tale. 

The story has become somewhat of a classic amongst the ranks of Australian theatre. Lawler’s work is a representation of domestic issues that plagued the 1950s. In the rural heartlands of Melbourne where a women is either too young to be married, or married, bar- maid Olive Leech plays host to two cane cutters from Queensland every year on their “layoff”. Olive is all too aware of the judgement she faces everywhere with her emotional attachment to Roo, waiting for the five months they spend together every year for the past seventeen. In a climax where a broke, desperate Roo, played by Steve Le Marquand, proposes to Olive all hell breaks loose as Oliverefuses in an emotionally charged display.

The 1950s were a volatile time for most of the world with the the end of the Korean War and the ominous threat of the Kremlin. Lawler chooses not to mention any of this in his play as it was assumed knowledge when the play was written. Instead, Lawler chose to write about the above domestic issues. 

One key aspects made this production the success it has been. The dedicated and precise effort the directors and actors have put into capturing Australia’s icon language. 

Slang terms fly about the stage, recreating the feel of rural Australia. Vintage vocabulary like “having a blue,” “as friendly as prickly pear,” “being full(drunk)” and  “hard yakka” all add to the overall atmosphere that the director of the show, Neil Armfield aimed to achieve. 

The recreation of the rural Australian accent is by no means an easy feat to achieve, however the cast of this production, on the whole, did a very good job. At some stages in the first act, particularly the first five minutes, Balzey Best (Olive) tends to overplay the bush twang, almost over stereotyping. The immaculately designed set does enough to establish that the setting is 1950s rural Australia and sometimes the accents were a little overpowering. On the other hand it was refreshing to see Eloise Winestock (Bubba Ryan) break the mould of the generic young female role in Australian theatre. Winestock managed to restrain the australian twang and used it in an adequate enough dosage to establish a rural demeanor. 

This once contemporary play has now become a historical drams, accurately portraying domestic issues of the early 1950s. As was written by Paul Galloway in the show’s program reproduced by the Queensland Theatre Company.

“The past is a foreign country and we observe, with an historical estrangement, the peculiar customs of the natives.”

The Queensland Theatre Company’s adaptation of the story does justice to Lawler’s original work, taking into every intricacy from the original script. The production runs for another day and it would be a shame to miss such an iconic piece of Australian writing. 

Four and a half stars.

Nick