Doll has its 54th summer from The Courier-Mail

Douglas Kennedy
April 13, 2008 12:00am

THE Melbourne Theatre Company was on the road with a touring production of Twelfth Night in 1955 and among the players were two men who would revolutionise Australian theatre.

One was a brash 21-year-old, Barry Humphries, who was busy creating a new character for a Christmas revue to be staged at Melbourne University that year, Edna Everage.

The other was the actor, director and struggling playwright Ray Lawler.

Lawler's new work, The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, would premiere at the university's Union Theatre and put on stage for the first time a distinctive Australian theatrical voice.

Lawler, who is turning 87 as his groundbreaking play is about to have a new season at La Boite in Brisbane, with Sean Mee directing, laughs as he recalls the era: "We didn't have any idea of the importance of what we were doing then or its lasting effect.

"As I remember, we were just pleased to have some outlet for our work.

"But yes, it's true, you could say that the Doll and Edna Everage came along in tandem."

Lawler, who was one of eight children born into a working-class Footscray family in 1921 and who left school at 13 to become a factory worker, had written 10 plays by the time the Doll won a major competition in 1954.

"Most of my works had been produced in the amateur theatre to that date and so I was over the moon when the Doll won," Lawler recalls.

"But in those days it was no guarantee that your work would be given a professional staging."

Luckily, the Doll bucked the trend and in 1955, when the Elizabethan Theatre Trust in Sydney put on the brave new work, about two canecutters travelling south to be with their barmaid girlfriends in the off-season, it was a sensation.

Roo, Barney (played by Lawler), Olive and Nancy had a longstanding "arrangement" which was symbolised by the kewpie dolls the lads brought home each year until the 17th off-season.

"The play had a sort of steamy realism, which I still think comes through today, although times have changed so much," Lawler says.

"When we went to England with the all-Australian production, we were constantly asked how it had got past the censors."

The English season, which had the sponsorship and support of Britain's most distinguished actor, Laurence Olivier, and his then wife, Vivien Leigh – of Gone With the Wind fame – was a triumph.

"Olivier was wonderful and Vivien even came along to support the regional shows and cried when it opened in the West End," Lawler says. "It seems every expat in London was there and almost disrupted the night by roaring with laughter and cheering all the time.

"I remember the playwright Terrence Rattigan (Separate Tables) asking why the name Young and Jackson had them in fits. He was none the wiser when I explained it was a pub in Melbourne. It was just that audiences weren't used to hearing about things Australian."

The Doll struggled in New York because of the lingo but later had successful runs there and around the world.

"It's more than a play to me, it's an important part of my life," Lawler says.

The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, with a cast including Jonathan Brand, Laura Keneally, Caroline Kennison, Peter Marshall, Kaye Stevenson, Candice Storey and Scott Witt, plays at La Boite from April 30-May 24.