Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler

For sixteen years two Queensland cane cutters have worked the punishing routine up North in the sugar cane fields for seven months of the year and travelled back to Melbourne to meet up for five months of partying and romance with their barmaid girlfriends. This seventeenth summer everything is different. One of the barmaids has ‘settled down’ and married a city bloke so a replacement date has had to be found. This ‘off-season’ proves challenging for them all.

Ray Lawler’s timeless tale of Queensland cane cutters and Melbourne barmaids has endured on the international stage, not due to nostalgia, nor because it spawned a new age in Australian writing for the theatre. The Doll has endured because the characters and their dilemmas are so true, so beautifully observed, so humorous and so poignant.

Plays and playwrights go in and out of fashion, but some prevail through time and speak to each subsequent generation. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler was a triumph at its premiere in 1955 at Melbourne’s Union Theatre. It has continued to play on the world’s stages ever since.

This 2020 production of the Australian classic Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is directed by Denny Lawrence and celebrates the 65th Anniversary of this iconic play.

This is Australian drama at its best. Come and see why...