WA's Black Swan State Theatre Company will perform one of the most significant plays in Australian history, 'Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll', this May.
Director Adam Mitchell says, “I've never seen a production of it, and I've never seen the film adaptation. But when you go back and read this play, because it's more than 60 years old, you're just reminded of how fantastically well-written it is. I read it and feel like it's a Tennessee Williams or an Arthur Miller [American playwrights of the 1910s]. It really feels like a big American drama. And it's not, it's just this little Australian play. Ray Lawler ['Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll''s playwright] who's now 96 or 97 years old was reflecting that he's seen hundreds and hundreds of 'Seventeenth Doll' productions around the world, but we've never done it here.”
Since its world premiere in 1955, 'Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll' has been performed abundantly across Australia, the U.K and the U.S. It has also had a film adaptation, and both British and Australian TV adaptations. “There's a few things that are different about our 'Seventeenth Doll',” Adam says.
“First of all, our actors. We've got the first indigenous actor to be in 'Seventeenth Doll', named Kelton Pell. He's a magnificent and very powerful actor. The other difference is the look and the feel of our production. Although we're keeping the time period in the costumes, the visual landscape is quite contemporary. Our play is set in a large light box. Ray Lawler talks about these Australian landscapes which are made of really incredible reds and very bright oranges. And so, in our world we're able to bring a lot of that colour into the visual life of the play.
“Sound design is always important in my work. There's no live music or musicians, but the music and sound design in this play really thread the acts together. Because the drama is so good, and the play is so robust, sound really just strings the show together.”
For a play that's been around for so many years, Adam believes that its themes and messages are still relevant today. “I think there's lots of different ideas explored in the play. Lots of different, unconventional ways to live your life, which I think in the 1950s was slightly racier than it is today. The big idea that a man needs to be a man is incredibly relevant today. That unless you are powerful and can go out and work for a living and bring home money for the family, you are worth nothing.
Adam's production is opening alongside Taylor Mac's 'Hir'. Both shows are part of Black Swan's 'The Boys Are Back In Town' series. “In a way they're both exploring different kinds of masculinity. Different ideas of what it is to be a man. In 'Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll', the idea is that men need to go out and cut cane for a living or work on the land, to have a representation of masculinity. In 'Hir', it's an entirely different idea. The opposite idea to that, which speaks to where we are now in the conversation about masculinity.
“You begin your experience upstairs with 'Seventeenth Doll' in a more of a traditional kind of rendering. And then you're offered something completely new downstairs with 'Hir'.”
