The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Dedication: To my sister Dessie who shared The Crystal Palace.
Epigraph: 'This stage, he said, is eternal. Even death is subject to these lights. ... This stage, he said, is Truth - never in living but here, here, all felt things are permitted to speak.' Robert Duncan - The Venice Poem
Contents
* Contents derived from the Sydney,New South Wales,:Currency Methuen Drama,1976 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
A musical look back at the 1930s, Bon-bons and Roses for Dolly is set in the Crystal Palace movie theatre, now a left-over dream factory, where for almost all of her life Dolly has sought consolation from the world at the sleazy alter of Hollywood. Dolly's life has also seen her surrounded by several symbolic female figures: Mary Corker, the strong intellectual grandmother who represents emotional sterility; Dolly's mother, Maddy, the older victim-dreamer without province; and Ollie Pullett, described by Hewett in her 1979 Hecate article as both the 'indomitable survivor and the final apotheosis of lower middle class suburbia... the voice of commonsense gone berserk' ('Creating Heroines' p77). When Dolly's dream world finally crumbles she finds herself middle aged, searching desperately in the blackened mirror of the old suburban fleapit for the ghost of the girl she once was. The reality is too much for her and she shoots herself during a re-run of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
'No two versions of Tatty are alike in this conjuring of fantasies about an enigmatic, ageless blonde. A black comedy about ageing, faded beauty and accepting eccentricity.'
Source:Australian Plays (https://australianplays.org/script/CP-1291/). (Sighted: 22/02/18)
