Lawson is Oriel Gray's first full-length play, and is based on the stories of Henry Lawson. These stories include 'Past Carin', 'At Dead Dingo', 'Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock','‘The Man Who Forgot', 'Pretty Girl in the Army', 'Water them Geraniums' and 'Steelman’s Pupil'.
The narrative begins with Wilson, Macquarie and Lawson yarning round a campfire beside a drover’s track. Lawson is the group’s chief storyteller. As each story materialises, the fire and the figures around it fade out and a spotlight thrown on the opposite side of the stage illuminates each new set of characters.
Characters
Act 1 Scene 1
THE BALLAD SINGER
JOE WILSON
MACQUARIE
LAWSON
BOBBY
MITCHELL
ORACLE
CONSTABLE
SCOTTY
THE LITTLE MAN
SMITH
BOSS
SERVANT GIRL
MRS. ASPINALL
AGENT
BILLY
CHINNY
DRUNK
MARGE
BILL
JIM
ACT 2 SCENE 1
GENT 1
GENT 2
STEELMAN
MARY WILSON
DORIE SPICER
MRS. SPICER
FLOWER GIRL
JACK MOONLIGHT
BOYS
THE ARMY
OFFICER
LASSIES
HANNAH
MATRON
RATTY WOMAN
CAPTAIN
Lawson was 'immediately popular with wartime audiences, particularly the American Soldiers, and was responsible for bringing an entirely new audience to the New Theatre’ (Harding, "The Torrents and the Doll', xii.).
‘Left-wing theatre historian Ken Harper commented that Lawson played ‘to packed houses in both Sydney and Melbourne and in most other capital cities. It was both implicitly nationalistic at a time when things were not going well in the war (1943-44) and firmly in the democratic spirit of the 1890s’’ (Harper, 'The Useful Theatre: The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne 1935-1983', Meanjin, 43 (1984) 63).
1943 : New Theatre, 167 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, Oct. 10, 17, 24.
1944 : New Theatre, 92 Flinders St, Melbourne, 19 Feb. - 4 Mar.
1944 : New Theatre, Sydney. Season commencing 4 June.
1945 : New Theatre, Melbourne. Season commencing 6 Oct.
1952 : New Theatre, Sydney, 17 Mar.
1953 : Adelaide New Theatre, Stow Hall, Flinders St, 10-12 Dec.
1954 : New Theatre Plympton Park, SA, June.
1954 : New Theatre, Frankston, Melbourne.
1955 : Performed by Melbourne New Theatre at the Victorian Drama League festival at Frankston.
1960 : Ringwood Church of England Hall, Ringwood, VIC, 24 Sep.
1961 : Waterside Workers' Federation Hall, 60 Sussex St, Sydney, Sat 18 March.
1961 : Grenfell, Wed 28 June.
1961 : Sydney Drama Festival of the Arts Council of Australia, Wed 30 Aug.
1961 : Turner Hall, Ultimo, NSW, 4 Oct.
1966 : Henderson Hall, Mt Isa, QLD, 1 Sep.
1967 : New Theatre, Melbourne, 17 June.
1967 : Willard Hall, Adelaide, 5 July.
1967 : Sandgate District State High School, 26 Sep.
1983 : University of Newcastle Drama Theatre, Callaghan, NSW, 21 May.
1983 : 321 Glenferrie Rd, Malvern, VIC, 29 June.
1983 : 848 Glenhuntly Rd, Caulfield South, VIC, 6 July.
1983 : 528 Hampton Rd, Hampton, VIC, 23 July.
1983 : Sacred Heart Hall, St Kilda West, VIC, 24 July.
1983 : Pumpkin Theatre, Richmond, VIC, 13 Aug.
1983 : Monash High School Theatrette, Clayton, VIC, 19 Oct.
Australian Women Playwrights : The Sacrifice of Oriel Gray
Clayton
:
Monash University
,
2015
10799496
2015
single work
thesis
'Australian Women Playwrights: the Sacrifice of Oriel Gray argues that multi-award winning left-wing Australian playwright Oriel Gray was sacrificed in 1955 by and for the dominant discourse in one symbolic act of “violence”. It investigates contributing elements and circumstances that may have worked together and separately to create and maintain Gray’s liminal status in the theatre world, despite her significant achievements, for more than half a century, and asks how it has been possible for Gray and her considerable body of work to be “forgotten” again and again. It also seeks to examine the manner in which Gray as an outsider/stranger/artist depicted sacrifice and expressed liminality in her work, and argues that Gray’s position provided her a particular point of view. The artwork at the centre of the thesis is the play script Oriel, structured by a dialogue between two Australian playwrights: ‘Oriel’ from the mid-twentieth century, and modern-day playwright, ‘Moss’. As a secondary task, both artwork and dissertation speculate on what effect the forgetting of Gray and her work may have had on the situation for women playwrights today, focusing particularly on contemporary multi-award winning left-wing Melbourne playwright, Patricia Cornelius. With reference to psychoanalysis, sociology and anthropology, using a feminist lens and a synthesized practice-as-research methodology, this thesis highlights Gray as an innovative, important playwright, and argues that she was sacrificed precisely because of her significance.' (Publication summary)
Upstaged : Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last
Annandale
Strawberry Hills
:
Pluto Press
Currency Press
,
2002
Z997385
2002
single work
criticism
'Some of the best-loved of Henry Lawson's short stories are dramatised by Oriel Gray in her play 'Lawson', which opens at the WWF Theatre on Saturday.' (Introduction)
Exit Left : Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman
Ringwood
:
Penguin
,
1985
Z291120
1985
single work
autobiography
'Tranquility is not the point at all in Oriel Cray's `Exit Left' (Penguin, 227pp., $7.95). With keen intelligence and wry humour her 'Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman' open the world of Australian bohemia in the '30s and '40s. Innocent though it all seems now, Gray's socialist upbringing, immersion in the theatre of the Left and the Communist Party — as well as her stealing of her sister's husband? — definitely won disapprobation in her day. She depicts the passionate commitment, fun and guilty failures of her youth with detachment and amused calm. Now I know who popularised the songs that were still around in my university days; what 'James McAuley was like in his wild youth; and how the coming of World War 11 interrupted some of the processes that would have cured the cultural cringe years before Australians finally stood tall. I enjoyed this crisply written and unsentimental book. ' (Veronica Sen review : The Canberra Times 24 February 1985 p8)
Australian Women Playwrights : The Sacrifice of Oriel Gray
Clayton
:
Monash University
,
2015
10799496
2015
single work
thesis
'Australian Women Playwrights: the Sacrifice of Oriel Gray argues that multi-award winning left-wing Australian playwright Oriel Gray was sacrificed in 1955 by and for the dominant discourse in one symbolic act of “violence”. It investigates contributing elements and circumstances that may have worked together and separately to create and maintain Gray’s liminal status in the theatre world, despite her significant achievements, for more than half a century, and asks how it has been possible for Gray and her considerable body of work to be “forgotten” again and again. It also seeks to examine the manner in which Gray as an outsider/stranger/artist depicted sacrifice and expressed liminality in her work, and argues that Gray’s position provided her a particular point of view. The artwork at the centre of the thesis is the play script Oriel, structured by a dialogue between two Australian playwrights: ‘Oriel’ from the mid-twentieth century, and modern-day playwright, ‘Moss’. As a secondary task, both artwork and dissertation speculate on what effect the forgetting of Gray and her work may have had on the situation for women playwrights today, focusing particularly on contemporary multi-award winning left-wing Melbourne playwright, Patricia Cornelius. With reference to psychoanalysis, sociology and anthropology, using a feminist lens and a synthesized practice-as-research methodology, this thesis highlights Gray as an innovative, important playwright, and argues that she was sacrificed precisely because of her significance.' (Publication summary)
