The author, director and cast need not have worried. In scope and energy it was closer to Tennessee Williams than to the pitter-patter of reproduction drawing-room comedies or the moderately operatic scale of the drama coming from European theatre. Aside from the communist radicals who thought that theatre could be used as a social weapon, no one took Australian plays very seriously.īut Lawler’s play made no apologies and aimed for big themes. Australian plays were tolerated, indulged, or taken as medicine. Until then, Australian plays had largely tended towards the quaintly rural, the fraudulently British and the apologetically small in scope. What frightened the author, director and cast on the opening night of the first production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1955 was that they were offering up a play that was unashamedly spoken in Australian language and accent.
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