Summer of The Seventeenth Doll

A production by Christine Harris & HIT Productions.

From the canefields to the city, an iconic Australian story of passion, bittersweet romance and the yearning for lost youth.

A triumph at its 1955 Melbourne premiere, followed by a national tour and hugely successful season in London’s West End where it won an award for best new play, this 2020 production of the Australian classic Summer of the Seventeenth Doll celebrates the 65th Anniversary of this iconic play.

For sixteen years two Queensland cane cutters have worked the punishing routine up north in the sugar cane fields for seven months of the year and travelled back to Melbourne to meet up for five months of partying and romance with their barmaid girlfriends. This seventeenth summer everything is different. One of the barmaids has ‘settled down’ and married a city bloke so a replacement date has had to be found. This ‘off-season’ proves challenging for them all.

“The Doll is a wonderful piece of theatre, that isn't really about a moment in our past, but about the search for love and the disappointments, denial and heartbreak that can come to those who refuse to see the realities of the world around them.” - Australian Stage