So what made The Doll so different? Essentially, it mined the same seam of working-class saga explored by John Steinbeck and Tennessee Williams in the US and the then-new generation of ''angry young men'' in Britain, such as John Osborne. Yet tax complications also meant he didn't return to Australia for two decades, sacrificing any chance he might have had of becoming the great Australian playwright, rather than the one-hit wonder he prefers to portray himself as. It made him so much money he didn't have to work again for years. It introduced him to some of the greatest actors of the age, notably Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.
Yes, the sudden celebrity took him, his play and his new wife to London and New York. The dramatic equivalent of what Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life had been for the Australian novel.Īnd yet, The Doll has also been something of a poisoned chalice for Lawler. The play that allowed a nation to break out of the straitjacket of endless imported hits.
The Doll is often called a pivotal moment in Australian theatre. We married in 1956 on tour, then had our twin sons when we were playing the West End.'' I met my wife when she was playing Bubba Ryan. When I hear those lines, I hear their voices … The oddness is all tied up with my personal life. Of course I played Barney originally in 1955 and we didn't finish until we failed in America in 1958. ''Hearing the lines again after all these years. ''It's a bit harrowing, really,'' Lawler says when asked how the read-through went. Credit: Anthony JohnsonĪs for Porter, she's made a career of playing blowsy characters such as Olive, the barmaid content with the spurious glamour of spending five months every year playing Cleopatra to Roo's blue-singleted Antony.
''No one in America understood it,'' says playwright Lawler.
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