Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Roo and Barney spend seven months of the year cutting sugar cane in Queensland and the remaining five down south with their Melbourne sweethearts, Olive and Nancy.

But after seventeen years of this lifestyle things have changed: Nancy has married another man and Roo has had a bad season in the fields. Lawler’s play of ageing, idealism, and the nature of mateship marked a turning point in Australian theatre.