Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

The Doll Trilogy #3

by Ray Lawler

Ray male, 4 female

Interior Set

This compelling Australian play was a success in London and was hailed by critics in New York for its vigor, integrity, and realistic portrayal of two itinerant cane Barney, a swaggering little scrapper, and Roo, a big roughneck. They have spent the past sixteen summers off with two ladies in a Southern Australian city. Every year Roo has brought a tinsel doll to Olive, his girl, as a gift to symbolize their relationship, but this seventeenth summer is different somehow. Old patterns must be broken, new ways found, as all four lovers come to face certain unpleasant truths about themselves. This unusual, compelling love story was made into a film entitled Season of Passion and starred Academy Award-winners Ernest Borgnine, Anne Baxter, John Mills and Angela Lansbury.

"Always gives the impression of having been written out of the author's heart and soul and because he had something that he passionately wanted to say."-New York Post

Genres: Plays, Classics, Drama, Fiction, Australia, Theatre, 20th Century

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Raymond Evenor Lawler AO OBE (23 May 1921 – 24 July 2024) was an Australian playwright and dramatist, actor, theatre producer and director.

Lawler's most notable play was his tenth, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1953), which had its premiere in Melbourne in 1955. The play was notable for changing the direction of Australian drama, considered one of the greatest of the 20th century, it was adapted to a film in 1959, starring Angela Lansbury and Ernest Borgnine. Since then it has been translated into many languages and performed in many countries.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

[On the set of the PLAY-WITHIN-THE-PLAY from Birdman. EDWARD NORTON, MICHAEL KEATON, NAOMI WATTS and ANDREA RISEBOROUGH, in character, are rehearsing the kitchen table scene]

KEATON: [the end of an impassioned speech] So what I want to know is, what do we talk about when we talk about love?

[Pause while everyone waits for the next line]

NORTON: This is a load of fucking shit.

WATTS: Mike, can't you just--

NORTON: I'm telling you, it's shit! [To KEATON] Like, who the fuck do you think you are? Raymond Carver was a genius. A solid-gold fucking genius. You're a Hollywood hasbeen who's never written anything in his life. How dare you touch his words? How dare you? How fucking dare you?

[KEATON gets slowly to his feet. He's just about to hit NORTON when his producer, ZACH GALIFIANAKIS, runs in]

GALIFIANAKIS: Guys, guys, cool it. Cool it. We're cool, right? Now Mike, why don't you explain your point to us and we'll talk about it?

NORTON: My point's pretty fucking simple. We shouldn't be doing this heap of crap.

GALIFIANAKIS: [humoring him] And what should we be doing instead?

NORTON: Well, I've been thinking about that and I can tell you right now. We should be doing Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

GALIFIANAKIS: I'm... I'm sorry. Run that by me again?

NORTON: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. It's a play by Ray Lawler.

GALIFIANAKIS: By who?

NORTON: Jesus Christ. He's only, like, the most important dramatist Australia's ever produced. And you haven't even heard of him.

KEATON: Look, what the fuck has this got to do with us?

NORTON: I'll tell you. There are these two cane-cutters, Barney and Roo--

GALIFIANAKIS: Cane-cutters?

NORTON: They go up to Queensland every year to cut sugar cane. They're good at it and they make a packet of money. And then they come back down south for a few months to see their women and live it up. They've got these two bar girls, see. They've been doing this for sixteen years.

KEATON: I don't--

NORTON: So like I said, they were really good in their day. Roo was a big guy, gang boss. Barney was a lady's man. But now they find they're past it. They're washed up. Roo isn't strong enough to lead the gang. Barney can't get it up any more. The women are disappointed.

[WATTS laughs involuntarily. NORTON ignores her]

NORTON: It's perfect for us. Riggan plays Roo. [He gestures at KEATON] I play Barney. You two play the women. We'll take the words of a guy who actually knows how to write great plays and we'll all be ourselves. It'll be real. Honest. Powerful. We'll blow them away.

GALIFIANAKIS: [who has been consulting his iPhone] Look Mike, this won't work. I mean, as well as the fact that we're already committed to doing Carver. There are other parts too--

NORTON: I thought of that. Sam can play Bubba. The young girl from next door. [He points to EMMA STONE, who has entered without anyone else noticing]

GALIFIANAKIS: But Mike, be reasonable. Sam's not an actress. She can't do it.

NORTON: It's not a big part. She's got a cute ass. It'll work.

[KEATON, even more angry, is about to speak, but GALIFIANAKIS gets in first]

GALIFIANAKIS: Look, we're all tired. We're not thinking straight. How about we take a break and come back in fifteen?

[The camera tracks KEATON back to his dressing room. GALIFIANAKIS tries to accompany him in, but KEATON slams the door in his face. He stands looking at the BIRDMAN poster]

THE VOICE OF BIRDMAN: You know he's right.

[KEATON's shoulders slump for a moment. Then he squares up and turns to the opposite wall, where there is another poster for the Carver play]

THE VOICE OF BIRDMAN: Do it.

[KEATON reaches out his hand towards the Carver poster and makes a mystic pass. The words blur and run, then reform as Summer of the Seventeenth Doll]

THE VOICE OF BIRDMAN: That's better.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was trying to work out when I first read this play – I must have been when I was about twenty – so, over half a lifetime ago. Anyway, the Melbourne Theatre Company are currently doing a production of this play and before going off to see it the other night I told my brother I was going and he asked what it was about. It is a funny thing, but this is arguably one of the most important Australian plays – if only for the role it played in regenerating Australian theatre in the mid-1950s. Also, it portrays a very authentic Australian voice – even if a rather working-class and bohemian one. But the fact is that if this ever was shown on Australian TV, I’ve never seen it.

While I was telling my brother about this play I realised that if this had been a play written in England or America (and so very American or British) then it almost certainly would have been shown on their television. It would be known by more people than just the sort of people who go to see plays at the MTC.

The story to this one is quite simple. There are a couple of blokes who work for seven months of the year in North Queensland cutting sugar cane. For the other five months of the year they come down to Melbourne and spend it with two girls they met seventeen years before. However, as much as no one wants to admit things could ever change, it is clear things are going to change drastically this year. One of the women has gotten married to someone else during the seven-month hiatus. She had grown sick of waiting and finally married someone else. The other woman has found someone else to be there when the two men are due to arrive, just to see if things will work out between her and the now abandoned male.

There is also a young woman who has known the two men and two women all of her life - she is the metaphorical child of this long relationship. She lives in awe of the relationship the four adults have had. It isn’t like other relationships, and this is the thing that the main female character, Olive, likes about it. It is five months of really living – her man comes out of the sun and has lots of money and lots of time and they live it up. Except, this year her man hasn’t got lots of money as he couldn’t bring himself to work because he was no longer the top gun. This is a play about growing older and pride and the inevitable changes aging presents.

While a lot of this play is very funny, particularly in the first act – the last two acts are painful to watch. 'Inevitable' is actually exactly the right word and this is a train-wreck in slow motion, but because all of the characters want something other than the inevitable to happen, the audience also tries to overlook all of the fault lines that are slowly opening and growing to gaping proportions. The play is also really interesting from the perspective of Australian and Melbourne history. Although 1950s Australia doesn’t exist anymore, you do hear echoes of it sometimes and this is a play that would be recognisably Australian to anyone who has spent any time here at all.

Both of my daughters currently work part-time at Luna Park – something I find terribly odd, in an amusing kind of way. It was very funny to hear it referred to here as somewhere you might take an adult girlfriend for a good time. It is anything but that now.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

When this play arrived on the Australian scene it wowed everybody. Notes to a Belvoir Theatre production say that

Demand for the play was so strong, that in 1956, several additional companies of actors were formed, who toured the play concurrently. A huge popular success, “it was reported that people drove hundreds of kilometres and a man swam a flooded river to see it in the Northern Territory” [Philip Parsons [ed.], Companion to Theatre in Australia, Currency Press, 1995, p565].

Its UK premiere was backed by Laurence Olivier, won the Evening Standard award for best new play of the year - 1957 - and went on to a six month season. The year after, that award was won by Tennessee Williams, with whom an obvious comparison has been made.

When the play next had its US premiere, it was backed by The Theatre Guild. Lawler really impressed the heavy-weights of the theatre world. But in the US the play bombed. Lawler was pressured to take out the Australian idiom which certainly isn't the point of the play, but absolutely provides its flavour. The themes may be universal, but the play's take is Australian. Lawler, in consultation with the cast, refused to submit to this castration.

As if to prove Lawler's folly, the film version did this to it:

rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic Australian play of the 1950s, Doll is now rarely professionally produced. This is a shame, because it remains a great play - a compelling drama with flashes of humour and real human tragedy. The language still rings true and vividly evokes an Australia which has long since past.

A revival of the play forms part of Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre 2011 program and the season has been a sell-out. Small wonder, for it is a wonderful production, with a great cast, wonderful performances, sensitive direction and a superb set. It was a joy to see it performed again. Both the play and the production will stay in my mind for a long time.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rather a depressing read, and not just because I had to be examined on it for my HSC. I just cannot work out why this is such a popular piece of Australian drama ... but what would a 17 year old know? I don't think I'll be re-reading it anytime soon. Sorry, Ray!

[MaryG2E · Rating 3 out of 5]

For sixteen years two Melbourne women, friends and co-workers at a local pub, have played hostess to two Queensland men, cane cutters who come south each December to escape the wet season. For five months these unconventional couples co-habit in a run-down old house in a seedy part of Melbourne, and live the high life, spending the mens’ pay packets on horse racing, alcohol and partying. Every year, the men present Olive with the gift of a Kewpie doll, which she greatly prizes and keeps as a memento of their fun times together.

In Year 17, things are different: some months previously one of the women, Nancy, has left the house to get married, and one of the men, Roo, arrives flat broke, having walked away from his job some weeks earlier. Olive has arranged for her friend and fellow barmaid, Pearl, to move into Nancy’s room in the hope that she and Barney will hit it off and resume the kind of happy-go-lucky lifestyle the two couples previously enjoyed. The previously strong friendship between the cane cutters is under stress, as their lives begin to diverge in unforeseen ways. All of these background factors combine to produce the tensions which unfold on stage in this landmark 1955 Australian play.

After sixteen years of seasonal frivolity and boozing, these people are no longer young. They are all around 40 years of age, and human frailties are beginning to appear. Roo has become disillusioned with the lifestyle of the seasonal workmen, and seeks for himself a more stable life, including a regular job and marriage. Barney is horrified at this act of disloyalty, as he clings to the ideal of the blokey mateship of the Australian bush. This divergence puts great strain on their long term friendship. Disillusioned with Barney's feckless nature, Pearl walks out.

Barney is not the only one to hold tenaciously to a lifestyle which is under threat. Olive’s disgust with Nancy’s betrayal emerges early in Act 1, and she is determined to ensure that the celebration and fun will continue in the seventeenth year. Her unwillingness to accede to the winds of change reveals a deep immaturity in her nature, which is played out in the most poignant scene of this drama.

Sixty years on from its premiere, how do we view Summer of the Seventeenth Doll? I think we have to look at it in its historical context. The 1950s in Australia was a time of deep conservatism, with Melbourne known as the City of Wowsers, for its strait-laced mores and narrow-minded insularity. The post-war Baby Boom was in full swing. What Ray Lawler did, in presenting this play to the public of that era, was ground-breaking. He challenged the conventions of the day by presenting people from the lower rungs of the social ladder, talking in the broad accents of the Australian vernacular. That these two couples were very happy ‘living in sin’ for five months each year for 16 years would have been deeply shocking to the well-off, middle class theatre goers of 1955.

For a reader of the play in 2015, the script is mildly interesting and the staging rather dull. The play’s enduring value lies more in its capacity to illuminate a part of recent Australian history, and to present us with a damning critique of the conservative thinking of the 1950s.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play is set in Melbourne (Carlton to be specific) in the abode of Emma and Olive who house two can-cutters for five months out of twelve in a year. The five month period is known as the lay-off, and it is a time that Olive cherishes because she is re-united with her ‘boyfriend’ Roo of the past sixteen summers. Roo is accompanied by reputable ladies man Barney, who has no woman to arrive back to – his long-term flame Nancy has gotten married. Although Roo and Barney are away more than they are home, Olive proclaims that she would not have it any other way and pities those who fall into the institution of marriage. Olive is forced to confront reality when it is brought to her attention that the romance that she believes she possesses in her life is all but gone. Instead she is faced with her age, her sacrifices, and a seventeen-year-old relationship that reaps nothing but distorted memories.

The symbol of the play is a kewpie doll that Roo has brought back for Olive; a tradition that has been alive as long as their acquaintance. As the cracks begin to show in the relationships between Olive, Pearl, Barney, and Roo, the doll begins to show signs of wear. The final act sees the doll broken by its buyer as Olive’s state of disillusionment is rudely shattered.

I really enjoyed this play. At the heart of it all, it is about a group of friends who refuse to acknowledge the fact that they are aging – they seek to hold onto their youth by repeating the same rituals year in and out. It is especially apparent in Olive’s refusal to conform to the stereotypical woman in the 50’s; she works in a bar, shuns marriage, and lives in sin for five months of the year. The two men also experience their share of stardust being lost from their eyes. The end is a devastating realisation that they have been trying to live up to the appearance of youth, when in reality they have not aged well.

[Calum · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
An intriguing character study of unorthodox, Australian lifestyle in a vivid 1950's Australia.
These characters were real, they where believable. That doesn't mean that they weren't disappointing and frustrating - as often, they were. Overall a sound play embodying an important phase of Australian history; a glimpse of a culture, attitude and mindset no longer existent.

[Margaret Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memorable for all the right reasons, this book brilliantly captures life, love, and aging. An unquestionable five stars.

[Rebecca Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really have nothing to say about this other than it was a bloody waste of time.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm. It seems that this year is not the best year for school books. This play wasn't too bad, but the ending was rather disappointing and a little confusing.

[MBC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading from a canonical perspective.
One can appreciate how sensational it would have been in 1955 when first performed. If I was writing on this for a VCE Literature exam, the key phrase would be "holds a mirror up to 1950s Australian society..." (tongue in cheek).

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

drama :)

[Kitty Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was horrified to see that Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is part of the HSC studies for year 12 . I think the play is way past its used by date and is unlikely to engage the bulk of the students who will be forced to read it. The play is littered with idioms that were fading at the time it was written and full of phrases and words are now obscure ; alien and frustrating relics of a marginal part of Australia in 1953 ! This will pose huge problems for English students that are otherwise competent and will prove an impossible hurdle for those struggling .For example: "pub game", "frock salon" ,"get's in a crack every time" , "good black", "You little trimmer" ,"two lousy fiddlies", "She's jibbin" , "a new ganger", "had a blue" , "biggest Cassa" , "Cop onto it" , "Smart fist of it", "coot" etc It may as well be in another language ! My own two sons with Aspergers who were A grade English students were utterly bewildered and increasingly distressed at grappling with such alien text and even I wasn't certain what most of it meant. I'm well-read and I'm not ashamed to admit I have no idea what a "trimmer" is or what "jibbin" means .

My neighbour's son born to Italian parents was just as bewildered as was the Asian student across the road (who was actually sobbing with shame and frustration until I explained that he would NOT be the only one struggling ).My best friends son with no learning difficulties of any kind was actually enraged .He felt that studying Summer of the 17th Doll in his HSC year would mean he would not get the high grades he had hoped for ."Of all the plays they could have chosen !!! " he shouted as he hurled the book onto the top of his wardrobe .( I wondered if it would remain there !)

As most students will be unable to find a visual film of the play they will find themselves significantly disadvantaged in having to visualize or imagine such an unfamiliar setting . In fact students are actually expected to contend with just reading the play despite the fact that plays are meant to be seen ! In choosing this outdated play the Education Department has failed utterly to consider how students with English as a second language will grasp the text .In addition one in 60 students are on the Autism spectrum and Summer of the 17th Doll is deeply problematic for those on the spectrum (I speak from experience with 2 sons). For one thing it is peppered with unfinished and incomplete sentences where the reader has to assume the unspoken words or fill in the gaps e.g " The ... boys ... didn't mind her getting married, then ? ". It is also filled with implication and insinuation that proves exceptionally difficult to assess or understand when combined with the unfamiliar setting combined with the colloquialism , jargon, idioms, and slang !(Particularly with out the visual cues you might experience if you saw the play ).

However many so called normal or neuro-typical children are likely to struggle with this play. The language is difficult because it simply isn't how people speak any more .There is no familiar ground to interest them , nothing they can identify with and no character they can relate to.

I haven't met anyone else who actually likes this play ! The most common response from friends and acquaintances has been an instant look of gloom and utter loathing when I have mentioned it . Without exception most people I have asked have memories of despising it at school over 30 years ago (and it seemed outdated then !).....

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first encountered Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 2001, at a time when I was deep in preparation for a special paper on Australian Literature. Most of my reading list until then leaned heavily towards the colonial or the modernist English canon, so stumbling upon Lawler felt like meeting a relative you never knew you had—someone who looked and spoke like the land they came from. This play didn’t try to dress itself up in borrowed British manners. It was unapologetically Australian, down to the cadence of its dialogue and the sweat-drenched reality of its characters.

The premise seemed simple enough: two Queensland cane-cutters, Roo and Barney, spend their off-season in Melbourne with Olive and her friend—sixteen summers of laughter, drinking, and romance, marked each year by Roo gifting Olive a doll. But in the seventeenth summer, the rhythm falters. Nancy has married, Pearl steps in with disapproving eyes, Roo’s strength begins to fade, and Barney’s charm no longer hides his irresponsibility. The seventeenth doll sits like a mute witness to a dream that can no longer survive.

What struck me most in that first reading was how Lawler handled the quiet tragedy of change. There was no grand death scene, no melodramatic betrayal. Instead, the play showed the kind of heartbreak that comes when you realise your golden years are behind you, and you have no plan B. Olive’s refusal of Roo’s marriage proposal—clinging instead to an idealised layoff season—felt both stubborn and heartbreakingly human. She would rather preserve the memory than watch it decay in reality.

Thematically, the play seemed to be wrestling with more than just personal disappointment. It was about a country in transition—post-war Australia shifting away from rural labour and physical heroism towards a more urban, perhaps more restrained, way of life. Roo’s decline mirrored the fading of the cane-cutter archetype. The colloquial speech, the naturalistic setting, the absence of genteel polish—all these were declarations of independence from Britain’s theatrical shadow.

In the context of my studies, The Doll stood as a turning point in Australian theatre—a declaration that local stories, told in local voices, could carry the weight of serious drama. It remains for me a vivid reminder that authenticity is often more radical than any imported sophistication.

Even now, I can still picture that seventeenth doll on Olive’s shelf—a small, fragile thing holding the entire weight of lost summers.

[MacK · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often think, after reading something from Australia, about the episode from The Simpson's where various slides are shown from the U.S. State Department Slideshow (Australia, Hurt Feelings Of). It shows Koala bears, Paul Hogan, a He-Man holding an Energizer battery and a variety of marmite. These characterizations crop up to remind me that, for all the things I, as an American, have in common with Australia there are some things I just will never understand (the guy and the Energizer battery for starters).

Reading this play reminded me of all the things I have in common, or wish I had in common, with people from the land down under. Unifying human concerns, deeply uniting themes of love and betrayal, a beautifully ochestrated series of revelations to bind the generation that has passed and the generation that is coming with the generation in power, grasping blindly on to the lives and memories that they value above others. (I would mention literary talent, but I don't think my own writing matches up with Lawler, though his brutal reflection of working guys is something I'd wish for my own work)

The only flaw with this book, is that, like Yahoo Serious, it's almost too Australian to be a completely amazing work. There's something that I know is lost in the translation, the reason why Broadway audiences turned on it en masse, the reason it's a byword in Australia and a hoplessly obscure reference elsewhere, the reason marmite is not in my family's cupboard. Something's are just too tied to the culture that begat them. (And they're fine that way)

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

ENGLISH HOD: We've got a class set of 'Summer of the 17th Doll'?
ME: Yeah sure! I've read that at some point. That'll be fine.

Two weeks later
ME: Oh man, I'm doing 'The Doll' with my Year 11s next term. I just read the blurb and realised that I totally hated it when I studied it in Year 10 Drama.
AWESOME-DRAMA-TEACHER-FRIEND: Oh no! I love it so much. You're basically dead to me.

Earlier today
ME: B-t-dubs, I finished 'The Doll'. Totally loved it.
Hugs ensue
AWESOME-DRAMA-TEACHER-FRIEND: I knew you would. We can be friends again!
ME: It's brilliant: the way he weaves such powerful symbols into realism theatre? Perfect. I'm totes pumped about using it for a discourse analysis - my class have nailed dominant and alternative readings in Australian texts, and this will push them to think about the way gender relationships are represented in the Australian canon.
AWESOME-DRAMA-TEACHER-FRIEND: I know. It's so rich. I love Roo. I've got a real soft spot for him. And I hate Pearl, but she's so important, and there's much you can do with her.
ME: Absolutely. And Olive reminds me so much of Daisy Buchanan. It's all very Gatsby in terms of the attempts to recapture the magic of youth.
AWESOME-DRAMA-TEACHER-FRIEND:Exactly! I'm glad you loved it!
ME: Me too.
Hugs for effect

*A largely accurate rendering of the conversation as I remember it. We tend to say intelligent things while sounding like squealing 15 year-olds gangsters. We cool.

[kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad immigrated to Australia from Italy in the 1950s as a twenty-something and (near as I can tell) spent the next few years alternating between cutting sugar cane up in Queensland and working in factories down in Melbourne. I knew about "The Doll" of course; everyone (here) does: Lawler's play is famous in the Australian theatre landscape for showing - essentially for the first time - Australian characters in a local setting speaking and acting like Australians. But I've never seen it performed and only first read it in 2008 when the fact that I was working at a performing arts school shamed me into it. And it kinda broke my heart. I was thinking about my dad, and seeing him in Roo, and wondering if he had a lover during his off-months down in Melbourne, and imagining he probably did 'cause my dad seemed to really fancy himself as a ladies man, but given my dad's personality (and he's only mellowed with age; he must have been impossible in the 1950s) and idiosyncratic English skills I can't see any relationship he may have had ending well. It's a shame, really, that The Doll is covered in the high school syllabus and probably turns kids off it for life, because it deserves all the respect it's allowed in theatre history.

[Julee T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read ' the doll' at university and then set about arguing against the question asserting that 'the dolls' represent an extended childhood rather than as the question stated 'child fulfilment'. How was I supposed the know the lecturer was on a 'child replacement bent?' Anyway I still think she was mistaken, everything points to a turning point in Australian self perception where we needed to see ourselves as grown up and therefore responsible rather than a youthful country. Look for the clever use of language to define the Australian vernacular , it would have been quite the sensation upon release. Well done Mr Lawler, just as relevant today!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the begginging i really liked this play, the characters were interesting, and the story had a lot of potential. I feel that it kind of started high and happy and fizzled out throughout the play to end with an all time low.
I also finished really disliking Olive, she is very stuck in her way and doesn't care who she hurts on her way to find what she wants.
Bubba was very cute, i liked her.

I think i would have liked to hear more about the other summers and then possibly the ending would have had more meaning.

Over all not too bad for a school text

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this last summer and I found it dated and tiresome (maybe that was only because I'm sluggish and unresponsive in Sydney summers).
I saw it performed a couple of weeks ago though at Belvoir and everything changed. It was impressive and funny and powerful all of a sudden. Theatre is hard work. It's so miraculous though. I wish more people liked going. I wish it wasn't a middle class hang out.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Analysed it for school, so it just made the original tediousness of the book even more pronounced. However, I guess it explored some issues pretty well and built upon the characters to the point where you understand them and their actions fairly well.

Not being a fan of tragic endings, I could barely tolerate the feelings and questions that this play left plaguing me long after I closed the cover to it.

[Valerie]

I read this in high school, and I HATED it. If you're looking for an introduction to Australian culture and geography, this ain't it. Try Banjo Patterson, would be my recommendation

I've been to the areas described, and I've seen better representations. This was somewhat like Death of A Salesman, except not as good.

[Rebecca Calder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of Aussie nostalgia from the mid 20th century. It's 15 years since I last read this. Character names like Pearl, Olive, Barney, Bubba and Roo and absolute crackers in the glossary makes for pure aussie gold. I love a sunburnt country and all it represents

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, doesn't this take me back to high school literature.

[Lucia · Rating 3 out of 5]

And interesting look into Australian society in the 50's and also people struggling to come to grips with the passing of their youth.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

....the sometime ache of even joyful relationships

[Pauline Jones bsc]

Good australian play. Once you get into it its quite good.

[BookQueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this play at the Sumner Theatre, Melbourne last year - refreshing to watch an Aussie classic play that was absolutely riveting.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The classic tale that lets you know things must change