'Amid the brothels, grog shops and run-down boarding houses of inner-city Surry Hills, money is scarce and life is not easy. Crammed together within the thin walls of Twelve-and-a-Half Plymouth Street are the Darcy family: Mumma, loving and softhearted; Hughie, her drunken husband; pipe-smoking Grandma; Roie, suffering torments over her bitter-sweet first love; while her younger sister Dolour learns about life the hard way.' (Book description from publisher's website.)
A BBC television adaptation of Ruth Park's novel.
Adapted from Ruth Park's novel of the same name, The Harp in the South is a six-part mini-series that follows the lives of an impoverished Irish-Australian family during the late 1940s. The Darcy family have moved from the bush to a housing-commission enclave in inner-city Sydney: a world of sly grog shops, prostitutes, pimps, and boarding houses. The father, Hughie, was a shearer's cook who lost his job through alcoholism. Although he is now able to hold down a job, his pay is often docked because he's recovering from a hangover. The family is held together by Mumma Darcy, a kindly but uneducated woman who still cannot get over the loss of her son, who disappeared as a child many years ago. The Darcys' two remaining children are Dolour (who is still at school) and Rowena (who works in a local factory). In order to make ends meet, the family take in boarders, some of whom are quite strange.
'A great Australian novel. A landmark theatre event. A portrait of Sydney as it once was.
'The world premieres of The Harp in the South: Part One and The Harp in the South: Part Two are designed to be enjoyed as one unforgettable, epic theatrical experience.
'This major new work is one of the most ambitious productions STC has ever created. Celebrated playwright Kate Mulvany has adapted novelist Ruth Park’s revered Australian trilogy – Missus, The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange – and spread these beloved stories across two equally ambitious plays.
'The two parts stand alone, but together they offer over five hours of monumental, exuberant theatre. It’s a moving family saga and a celebration of Sydney in all its funny, gritty glory.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 11 (Unit 2)
Themes
ageing, Australian humour, coming of age, domestic life, life and death, love, poverty, resilience, romance, the Depression, the past
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Literacy, Personal and social
Cross-curriculum Priorities
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
'Ruth Park’s novels The Harp in the South (1948) and Poor Man’s Orange (1949) portray a fictional Irish-Australian family living in the actual inner-city neighbourhood of Surry Hills. The poor, immigrant status of the Darcys is foregrounded in the novels from the start, yet equally important is the character of Aboriginal man Charlie Rothe, who is introduced in Chapter 14 of The Harp in the South. This essay suggests that Charlie’s late arrival is the reverse of the non-fictional situation evoked in the opening of Park’s The Companion Guide to Sydney (1973), in which the author imagines the First Fleet’s entry into a place that was already occupied. The issue of ‘first-ness’, and what comes after, is central to Park’s narration of both family intimacy and romantic love between her Irish Australians and latecomer Charlie. Highlighting enigmatic descriptions of Charlie’s Aboriginal parentage and ancestry and associating this language with the appropriative desire felt by each of the Darcy sisters, I argue that the character of Charlie is pivotal to Park’s exploration of themes of imitation, borrowing, possession and (belated) recognition.' (Publication abstract)
'Ruth Park’s novel The Harp in the South (1948) is a classic of Australian fiction. Just as television viewers in recent decades would recognise “Ramsay Street” as the fictional centre of Australia’s longest-running television soap opera Neighbours, earlier generations of readers would have recognised with affection “Twelve-and-a-half Plymouth Street”: the hearth and home of Harp’s fictional Irish-Australian family, the Darcys.'
'Head south on Elizabeth Street, turn left after Devonshire. Butt Street is more of an alley, with a slight kink at the beginning. Apartments and warehouses loom either side. You are walking towards Clisdell Street in August 1940, and on the left in the gutter is the corpse of Bill Smillie, gambler, gunman, SP standover. Next to his body is a dead cat.' (Introduction)