Drama-Summer of the seventeenth doll

Summer of The Seventeenth Doll writeen by Ray Lawler is one of the first internationally acclaimed Australain plays. Plot: It is Australia in the 1950's. For the past sixteen years, sugarcane cutters, Roo and Barney, have gone to Melbourne every lay-off season to live with their barmaid girlfriends, Olive and Nancy. Things are different from the start of the seventeenth summer. Nancy has left to get married. There has been a fight on the canefields, …

…description including the encroaching greenery - perhaps symbolic of the reality that is also intruding on their illusion. The butterflies and birds and other decorations all contribute to the illusion, and are part of what destroys the ideal of the lay-off season for Olive. Naturalism --> slang, language, set, costume approximates real life, natural language rhythms etc. Realism --> looks at real situations and relations; explores the poetic dimension including the symbolism of the play.