News location:

Canberra Today 17°/20° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

‘Doll’ season sells out in Canberra

CANBERRA Theatre Centre’s subscription season kicks-off tonight when it opens Belvoir’s “Summer of the Seventeenth Doll” at The Playhouse.

The season is sold-out, however “CityNews” got a sneak-peek of Ray Lawler’s quintessential Australian play about “how, after 17 years, all good things must come to an end”.

“The Doll” follows Barney and Roo, who every summer come back from cane cutting in Queensland to their home in Carlton, which they share with Nancy and Olive. However this summer, Nancy’s gone and newcomer Pearl takes her place. It stars acting great Robyn Nevin alongside Blazey Best, Travis McMahon, Helen Thomson and Steve Le Marquand.

[portfolio_slideshow]

“I’ve been at Belvoir for 17 years [as artistic director] and had tended to favour the works of Patrick White and Stephen Sewell and had always thought ‘The Doll’ was more a State theatre company fare,” Armfield told “CityNews”.

“And then I left Belvoir and Ralph Myers came in and asked me to do ‘The Doll’.

“I read it for the first time, seriously considering the idea of doing it and was just struck by what a perfect piece of theatrical construction it was.

“I edged into it with relish. I rang Robyn Nevin and asked if she could play ‘Emma’, she said ‘yes’ and there was no stopping me.”

“The Doll” has been on the Australian theatre scene since 1955, and Armfield says, one thing he was fortunate to have, despite the many years was input from the playwright.

“We have the unique situation, of any kind of country in the world, where we have the playwright who wrote the seminal work of the nation’s theatre, some 58 years ago, still alive,” he said.

“Ray was very keen to make some adjustments to the play, which I was very weary of but his instincts were of course of a brilliant dramatist the shift he made to the text was better.

“I think more than anything else, particularly the time when the social institute of marriage is under such scrutiny and contemplation in Australian society that this is a play about the morality of life outside marriage and it takes an absolutely universal human situation of two people full of life who are tragically trapped in the past and who are refusing what their bodies are telling them, that they are getting old.

“It’s a basic of human growth that we all have to deal with.”

Currently, Armfield is working on “The Ring” in Melbourne and is about to take the hit-play “The Book of Everything” to New York.

However, next year he’ll be back in Canberra for the world premiere of “The Secret River”, a play he will be co-directing with Bangarra Dance Theatre artistic director Stephen Page for the Centenary of Canberra.

“Summer of the Seventeenth Doll” opens tonight till Saturday March 17. More information at canberratheatrecentre.com.au

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews