Despite being confronted with the downsides of clinging tightly to their preconceived gender roles, they struggle to create new definitions, which shows how entrenched their biases about gender are.Ĭritics have noted that Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is classically Australian in the way it styles masculinity.

However, when it comes to light that Roo walked off the job after being humiliated by the physical limitations of his age and must then get a job in the city to support himself, the characters grapple with their biases about gender and work. For Barney, Roo, and Olive, cane cutting-backbreaking manual labor in the Australian bush-is an undeniably masculine job that allows for a freeform, untethered lifestyle. Denny will be supported by a highly-experienced creative team.Summer of the Seventeenth Doll explores the intersection between gender and work, showing, in particular, how work informs the characters' ideas of masculinity. This production will be directed by the award-winning Denny Lawrence whose history with HIT includes many successful productions including Shirley Valentine, Always…Patsy Cline, Educating Rita, Glorious! Hotel Sorrento and most recently, My Brilliant Divorce. This ‘off-season’ proves challenging for them all. One of the barmaids has ‘settled down’ and married a city bloke so a replacement date has had to be found. This seventeenth summer everything is different. Lawler’s much loved tale of Queensland cane cutters and Melbourne barmaids has endured, not through nostalgia, nor because it spawned a new age in Australian writing, but because the characters and their dilemmas are so true, so beautifully observed, so humorous and so poignant.Ī triumph at its 1955 Melbourne premiere, it was followed by a national tour and hugely successful season in London’s West End where it won an award for best new play.įor sixteen years two Queensland cane cutters have worked the punishing routine up north in the sugar cane fields for seven months of the year and travelled back to Melbourne to meet up for five months of partying and romance with their barmaid girlfriends. Plays and playwrights go in and out of fashion but some endure and speak to each subsequent generation. We’re so thrilled that this brilliant production gets another chance at life, and hope to see you at the theatre soon. Our fabulous cast are back in the rehearsal room and hard at work after a two and half year hiatus. Great news theatre fans! HIT Productions tour of Summer of the 17th Doll is underway in 2022.

Summer of 17th doll