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... Australian Playhouse Series
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Includes

y separately published work icon The Venetian Twins : A Musical Comedy Nick Enright , Carlo Goldini , Terence Clarke (composer), Sydney South Australia : Currency Press State Theatre Company of South Australia , 1996 Z298631 1979 single work musical theatre humour
y separately published work icon Night on Bald Mountain Patrick White , 1964 single work drama
— Appears in: Four Plays 1965; (p. 265-356) Collected Plays : Volume I 1985; (p. 265-356)

'Night on Bald Mountain has been called Patrick White's attempt at the first Australian tragedy. A new nurse has arrived to take care of the notorious Mrs Sword at the house on Bald Mountain. Despite best intentions, she finds herself swept up in the machinations and preoccupations of a cast of restless oddities. Ultimately, the flaws of human nature soon emerge as forces beyond all control.'

Source: Malthouse Theatre (2014 season).

Paddington : Currency Press State Theatre Company of South Australia , 1996
y separately published work icon The Shifting Heart Richard Beynon , Z510836 1957 single work drama

The Shifting Heart is set in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood on Christmas eve, 1956. It explores the tensions between three sets of neighbours: the Bianchis, the Pratts, and the Fowlers, who represent different aspects of Australian culture of the time. Racism and the changes brought by immigration are the central themes of the play.

Sydney : Currency Press State Theatre Company of South Australia , 1996
form y separately published work icon The Fire on the Snow Douglas Stewart , 1941 Z320857 1941 single work radio play Sydney : Currency Press State Theatre Company of South Australia , 1996
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

Sydney : Currency Press State Theatre Company of South Australia , 1996
Last amended 9 May 2001 10:42:46
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