2026 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Red Stitch Actors Theatre and to celebrate, the Red Stitch ensemble has chosen to program a trilogy of plays by Ray Lawler – to be performed over several nights and, on Saturdays throughout the run, all three plays in one day.
The third and final play chronologically is The Summer of the Seventeeth Doll, which was first performed in 1955 at the Union Theatre – a precursor to the Melbourne Theatre Company of today. It’s an Australian classic, the first to tour internationally with actors using their natural Aussie accents. It’s a foundational text because it showed Australian audiences themselves on stage.
It’s the story of Olive and Pearl, two women living in Carlton, and their relationships with Roo and Barney – two cane cutters who worked in Queensland seven months of the year, and spend their off-season all cashed up in Melbourne. It was radical at the time – depicting the lives of two women, choosing to live unconventional lifestyles with these itinerant farm workers outside of monogamous marriage.
Twenty years after the premiere of The Doll, as it has become affectionately known, MTC Artistic Director John Sumner commissioned Lawler to write two more plays about these characters. Kid Stakes, which premiered in 1975, and Other Times, from 1976, are prequels – digging into the lives of Lawler’s characters and the milieu of Carlton during the depression, just post-war and during the seventeenth summer of Olive and Roo’s seasonal relationship.
Lawler fashioned the prequels in a way so that they could run in repertory with a cast of seven performers, but the whole trilogy hasn’t been done in that manner for forty years. Red Stitch Actors Theatre has challenged their ensemble and Artistic Director Ella Caldwell to bring all three plays back to life on the theatre’s intimate stage.
In short, the production is a triumph. Experiencing all three plays on the same day is a marathon, in a way that feels communal – we’re all in it together. All theatre is a group experience, but spending all day with the same people surrounding you, watching these characters grow and change over seventeen years – and our 11 hours – is hard to compare to other theatrical adventures.
I am a big fan of durational works. My favourite play is Angels in America, which is over six hours when performed back-to-back – closer to eight with a generous dinner break. The Inheritance runs around seven hours. My most epic day at the theatre was ten-hours of Life and Times by Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, which included breaks but, in that case, the ensemble cast members cooked the audience dinner! No rest for them at all.
Red Stitch regulars Jacob Battista and Sophie Woodward have co-designed the set, crafting a room of period detail that changes only in the most subtle ways over the years these plays are set. I am always impressed by how malleable this tiny space can be, but with a set of stairs that disappears into the rafters and the audience entrance being used as the wings the space’s boundaries have been really stretch. The costumes are superb, each of them telling us so much about this rich array of characters across the years.
Rachel Burke’s lighting is fully arresting: sunlight streaming through windows, occasional headlights appearing through the glass front door, or an explosion of colour at New Years’ Eve during the second play, Other Times. Even when it’s pitch black outside the central home, the wall lights create a subtle glow, and at moments the tableau glows like a yellowed, sepia photograph.
Director Caldwell has crafted an epic experience that never loses sight of the intimate character stories that Lawler has penned. We spend so much time in the one room, but the space is rarely static. Not that there aren’t moments of stillness, but the show never feels stuck in place. Time moving is the driving force of the piece – barrelling along to its well-known final third: a play many of us studied in high school, even if we haven’t seen multiple productions of the classic.
The notion of a prequel, let alone two, can cause consternation: is Lawler just explicating the backstory he’s pieced out so judiciously in The Doll? Will revelations in the earlier plays feel like they are cheapening the allusions in the third and final? In some moments, it was like a blurred image snapping into focus.
Where you might roll your eyes at stories of Barney’s youthful indiscretions in the final play out-of-context, hearing about them in more detail in Kids Stakes gives the character a new distasteful edge. Having the story of Olive and Nancy first meeting Roo and Barney spelled out in Kids Stakes made hearing the truncated, off-the-cuff version ten hours later very moving. You can feel that time has passed for these characters, too.
The cast is phenomenal, not just for the feat of endurance: for bringing the characters to joyous life in the first play, watching them bruised and battered by the experience of World War II in the second and, finally, seeing them matured and world-weary by the end.
Caroline Lee as matriarch Emma is outstanding: a rich and complicated performance of a protective mother, slowly ceding ground to daughter Olive as she matures. Their relationship is the most complicated and compelling throughout.
Ngaire Dawn Fair’s Olive feels alive from the very first moments and watching her age – weighed down by the narrowing of her choices – is truly captivating.
Fair’s real-life partner, Ben Prendergast, is a Roo for the ages – seeding the flaws of the character early on and watching the man slowly crumble was a real privilege.
Emily Goddard gets to essay two different characters: Nancy in Kids Stakes and Other Times, and Pearl in The Doll – who must heed the warnings of the earlier character, only heard about in dialogue in the final play.
Nancy is so central to the machinations of the Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, seeing her in front-and-centre is probably the riskiest choice Lawler made dramaturgically. Fleshing out the character is a real triumph, though.
Goddard is given a lot of rich material in the second play, in particular; ageing Nancy from comic relief into a hardened woman. We understand her choices much more clearly than we’ve ever been able to before.
John Leary’s Barney makes a lasting impression, grappling with the fallout of earlier misdeeds throughout. Lucinda Smith’s Bubba (an offstage child in the first play) brings a youthful freshness into the household in Other Times, while facing a future with questionable men by the end. The character has always been the image of history repeating, but now we’re watching that history play out.
Rounding out the cast is Khisraw Jones-Shukoor, who must create three distinct characters in each play. It allows him to showcase his range: first softboy Dickie, then reserved Josef to troublemaker Jonnie in the final play. All parts are essential to their stories, and Jones-Shukoor shows how versatile his is.
The risk of putting on these plays has paid off in stunning fashion. Red Stitch is known for its solid productions of challenging contemporary texts – from local and international playwrights.
In recent years, the company has found some success in resurrecting classics – made all the more memorable by containing them in the pressure cooker of their big little theatre. After the success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, turning to Lawler’s Doll Trilogy is a high-wire act on another level.
Red Stitch has pulled it off. It’s only February and the company is staging the theatrical event of the year. You may see a handful productions of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in your lifetime, but you may never get to see the trilogy ever again. Theatre is ephemeral and so is this experience.
Grand, moving and unforgettable.
The Doll Trilogy
Red Stitch Theatre, Rear 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda East
Performance: Saturday 21 February 2026
Season continues to 11 April 2026
Information and Bookings: www.redstitch.net
Images: Ngaire Dawn Fair in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – photo by Chris Parker | Ben Prendergast, Ngaire Dawn Fair, Emily Goddard and John Leary in Kid Stakes – photo by Chris Parker | John Leary and Emily Goddard in Kid Stakes – photo by Chris Parker | Caroline Lee in Other Times – photo by Chris Parker | Ben Prendergast, Ngaire Dawn Fair and Lucinda Smith in Other Times – photo by Chris Parker | Khisraw Jones-Shukoor in Kid Stakes – photo by Chris Parker
Review: Keith Gow