Doll Trilogy: Kid Stakes / Other Times / Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

The Doll Trilogy #1-3

by Ray Lawler

Tight Binding, Limited Chipping or Tears to Edges, Limited Markings or Creasing, Price Tag Present on Front Cover, Price Written on Front Page

297 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

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

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a vague, vague memory of these three plays being
telecast on Australian TV in the late 1970s - the many
photos published in this "must have" book look familiar
to me.
"The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" was written in 1953 as
a contemporary play and was an instant hit. Ray Lawler's
play was about the tensions arising as two older barmaids,
Olive and Pearl, get together with their "boyfriends", a
couple of cane cutters who head to Melbourne every lay off
for a spree. One of the pivots is Nancy, not actually in
the play but whose absence is the underlying propeller for
the action. In 1958 when "the Doll" opened in New York Lawler
confided to a friend that he felt he had another play in him,
specifically to explain how the odd relationship came about
and to expand on Nancy's character.
That was "Kid Stakes" written in 1975 and set in suburban
Melbourne in 1937. You meet young Olive, her mother who runs
a boarding house, and Nancy, a boarder, a bit older and more
worldly than Olive and who wants to better herself by reading
literature by "Somerset Morgum" (Olive's mum pronunciation!!).
Olive is dissatisfied with her current beau "goodie goodie"
Dickie, a window dresser where she and Nancy work, and eagerly
embarks on a friendship with the sensitive Roo leaving Nancy with "Jack the Lad" Barney. The crux of the play is when Olive and Nancy leave their millinery jobs to become barmaids, indicating a lowering of their standards which becomes very clear in the introduction to the next play "Other Times" set in 1945. The house and yard are not so spruce, Roo and Barney seem right at home ("living
in sin" even for a few months of the year would have been
scandalous in 1945 suburbia) and there are a lot of facts to
be faced even though Olive still lives in her own little world.
A small corner cupboard shows Nancy's whiskey supply but the
climatic scene (apart from Nancy's realisation that she must
get away and live her own life to find some happiness) comes
when Nancy tries to explain to the delusional Olive just what
those yearly sprees have cost Roo in lost promotions and just
plain self respect.
Although "Other Times" got good reviews, "Kid Stakes" didn't
- reviewers couldn't get past the fact that it just didn't have
the punch that "the Doll" had but one Saturday in 1977 the
plays were shown in sequence during one day at the Russell Street
Theatre in Melbourne and at the end players (Sandy Gore as
Nancy also played Pearl in "the Doll") and audience celebrated
a unique experience together. Reading the plays (I read them
all in a day as well) gave me a glimpse of what life could
have been like behind the weatherboard and lantana bushes of
suburban Australia in those turbulent pre and post War years.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

love love love ... i read these plays in High School and as rapt when my daughter studied "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" in year 12..
Although it is a stand-alone play, I think you get a better understanding of the caracters if you read the trilogy