Why The Doll Trilogy Still Hits

Together, they form The Doll Trilogy, an ambitious work of Australian theatre that traces 17 summers in the lives of a group of working-class Melburnians. More than 40 years after the trilogy was last staged in its entirety, it arrives at Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat, offering audiences a rare chance to see Lawler’s full vision unfold.

Ray Lawler was born in 1921, into an Australia shaped by economic uncertainty, the legacy of the Great Depression and the upheaval of the Second World War. When Summer of the Seventeenth Doll premiered in 1955 at Melbourne’s Union Theatre Repertory Company (now Melbourne Theatre Company), it marked a decisive shift in Australian theatre, bringing a local voice, vernacular and sensibility to the stage. Upon Lawler’s death in 2024, the company described the play as a turning point in Australian theatre history.

Originally conceived as a standalone work, The Doll went on to tour nationally and internationally, playing London’s West End and Broadway before being adapted for film. Its success cemented Lawler’s reputation, and in the 1970s he returned to the world of the play, expanding it backwards in time with the prequels Kid Stakes and Other Times. Together, the three plays mark the years 1937, 1945 and 1953, unfolding within the same Victorian-era boarding house in Carlton, presided over by the sharp-tongued and formidable Emma.

'A particular aim, when writing the trilogy,' Lawler wrote in the foreword to the published edition, 'was that the plays should serve as an acting challenge for a team of seven performers.' It is that ambition — theatrical, emotional and logistical — that now finds its home with Melbourne’s Red Stitch Theatre, led by Artistic Director Ella Caldwell, as the company brings the trilogy to Ballarat.

The plays follow Queensland cane cutters Roo and Barney, who travel south each year during the off season to spend their summers with barmaids Olive and Nancy. The ‘doll’ of the title refers to the carnival Kewpie doll Roo gives Olive during their first summer together—a ritual repeated each year, with the accumulating dolls becoming a vivid symbol of constancy, routine and emotional investment.

In Kid Stakes, set in 1937, the four have just met. By Other Times, set in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, fractures begin to appear, particularly in Nancy and Barney’s relationship. By Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Nancy has gone, choosing marriage, and stability, elsewhere. Into her absence steps Pearl, a recently widowed barmaid, unknowingly catalysing the reckoning that has long been deferred.

Seen together, the trilogy acquires cumulative emotional weight. As playwright Michael Gurr once observed, knowing the outcome of The Doll casts a shadow over the earlier plays, joy inflected with inevitability, optimism tinged with loss.

'Kid Stakes is just really the flush of youth,' Caldwell says. 'The lust and play and hope and optimism of being in your twenties. And then through Other Times, which is really under the shadow of World War II, because it’s just as the war has ended, we have that huge societal shift, and at the same time, the characters are at this fulcrum in their life, where they’re having to grow up in a whole new way.'

What makes these relationships especially striking is the agency given to the women within them. Olive, Nancy and later Pearl participate in romantic arrangements that are affectionate and intimate, yet deliberately seasonal, existing outside marriage and long-term domestic expectation. For the period, this was a rare portrayal of women choosing companionship on their own terms—lives shaped by independence, pleasure and restraint, with neither judgement nor sentimentality imposed.

'You grow to know and love Nancy,' Caldwell has noted elsewhere, 'and you better understand the resilience of Olive and Emma, the strength of vision and fight in all of the women.'

That deeper understanding is precisely what staging all three plays affords, and what makes the project so demanding. Each play follows a traditional three-act structure, requiring the same ensemble of actors to age convincingly across decades while charting significant social shifts through the characters and their relationships.

'It’s so demanding,' Caldwell says. 'It’s three full-length plays—not the contemporary 80-minute, straight-through piece, but a traditional three-act structure with an interval. Even just the costumes are three plays’ worth of work.'

On Saturday 20 June, the trilogy will be presented as a complete theatrical journey, following Lawler’s characters across 17 summers in one immersive sitting.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat is an ideal setting for this experience. One of Australia’s most beautiful heritage theatres, Her Maj offers a strong sense of occasion—particularly in winter, when the city comes into its own. Inside the auditorium, audiences can stay cosy with the theatre’s much-loved heritage foot warmers, which gently circulate heated water through the footrests.

Extending the experience beyond the stage, Itinerant Spirits will create a series of signature cocktails inspired by each play in the trilogy. These can be enjoyed upstairs in the glamorous Long Room Bar where our Dame Nellie Melba's piano will be playing a selection of songs from each era, offering time to pause, discuss and reflect between performances.