Theatre review : summer of the seventeenth doll
MTC, Arts Centre, Melbourne until February 18
Written by Ray Lawler, directed by Neil Armfield
Before this Monday night, I had never seen Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. I remembered once hearing that it was the story of a fellow who bought a doll for his lady every summer for seventeen years until she got sick and tired of waiting for him to just propose already.
Lucky I read the corresponding Wikipedia entry before I went to the play, and lucky I saw it two days before Wikipedia’s blackout. Yes, Olive (Alison Whyte) has been deeply attached to Roo (Steve Le Marquand) for seventeen summers, and treasures his presents, hanging them around her living room as decorations. But she’s horrified by the idea of marriage.
I’m the kind of feminist who’s not opposed to marriage. But this is a play that calls on its audience to examine the gaps between what marriage should or could look like, and what it does look like in practice. To make this point, the story sets up some unconventional relationships.
Roo and Barney (Travis McMahon) work as canecutters for seven months of the year, then fly south to Melbourne for their long summer holiday. They spent sixteen summers’ worth of days and nights with Olive and Nancy, until Nancy married someone else. The play opens with Olive briefing Pearl (Helen Thomson), the new recruit to their circle and her friend from work. Yes, Olive and Pearl work as ‘barmaids’ – it seems that the liberty they enjoy in working outside the home in 1953 doesn’t extend to a gender-neutral job title.
This summer isn’t quite the same as the previous sixteen. Everyone misses Nancy. Olive longs for things to go back to the way they were. And Roo is broke. Instead of borrowing money from Barney or Olive, he takes a job in a paint factory to shore up his proud masculinity and works during the holiday season known as the ‘layoff’.
The constant use of slang – he’s chock-a-block, they’re having a blue – makes it tricky to keep up. For even more of a challenge, the whole play is delivered in a broad Australian accent somewhere between Kath and Kim and Julia Gillard with a head cold. This helpfully reminds a modern audience that despite Olive’s relative freedoms, the drama is set almost six decades ago, in a time when we couldn’t make fun of our female prime minister’s accent because, oh wait, females couldn’t be the prime minister.
And it’s here, in the 1950s, where Olive’s distaste for marriage as an institution is grounded. She speaks with dismay, even pity, about the marriages she’s seen around her, even calling Nancy’s marriage a mistake. By contrast, she raves about the fun she has during the lay-off, the afternoons at the pub and the days at Luna Park. To a modern audience, it would seem that the commitment to spend one’s life with someone else doesn’t preclude a couple from going to Luna Park a lot. But the examples of marriage that Olive has seen make it look like a cage.
Olive’s elderly mother Emma (Robyn Nevin) is another character who has seen too much of the world to be enchanted with it. Robyn Nevin excels, delivering comic lines in a voice that’s not only ocker but also doddery.
Steve Le Marquand as Roo must also be commended. He’s loud, passionate, easily humbled. When caught in his factory uniform by Johnny, another holidaying canecutter, his pace slows with gruff embarrassment. But when he argues with Barney, the intensity of their fight reverberates through the theatre. In my seat near the back, I felt drained just from watching.
The deliberately sparse set helps. Olive’s lounge room features wooden floorboards, a dining table, a couch, a sink and a piano. The sprawling gaps between items of furniture give the characters plenty of space to brawl, to shout, or to edge towards each other in reconciliation.
If you’re not based in Melbourne, it’s worth keeping this play in mind until you have an opportunity to see it. While it’s not a documentary, neither is Mad Men, and it provides a fascinating alternative snapshot of the fifties.
If you do have a chance to get to this production, snap it up. As the audience’s standing ovation attests, the show is unexpected, captivating, and chock-a-block full of things to think about.
By Elizabeth Redman
Image Credit: 1.
