Lawler’s most famous play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, and the story of the Melbourne Theatre Company are forever intertwined
Ray Lawler, the author of the play 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll', in front of Russell Street Theatre in 1977.Ray Lawler, the author of the play 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll', in front of Russell Street Theatre in 1977., was one of the artists responsible for establishing the first non-commercial repertory theatre in Australia – the Union Repertory Theatre Company, nowIt is impossible to think of the two achievements separately.
The Doll was not an obvious choice. In 1954, it shared first prize with Oriel Gray’s The Torrents in a“The play was set in Carlton, literally almost over the road from the theatre. It was very hard for everyone to realise that we were so close to home. Was it a play about shearers and wombats, muttered one critic?”
In retrospect, two things can be said about the Doll’s success. First, it is easy to take for granted and fall into rote deprecation of its influence, like the theatre critic”. Playwrights are not responsible for the drama they inspire, only the work they create. The Doll remains a singular event for Australian theatre, and for Australian culture more broadly, as it has tacked away from its British colonial origins.
The power and the challenge of the Doll is that it resists globalised interpretation: it remains supremely and stubbornly an Australian play.
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