SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL
Which brings us, oh ye brothers and sisters currently pushing 40, to the Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Because it’s about two couples in their late 30s. The men, Roo and Barney, cut cane in the north of Australia seven months out of the year, heading 2,000 miles south to Melbourne each summer to party away the layoff season with their girlfriends, Olive and Nancy. And so it’s been for 16 wild summers, each one marked by a souvenir doll that Roo gives to his gal, Olive. But the 17th summer Nancy can’t make it because she up and married someone else. So Barney, who’s not the ladies’ man he used to be, is fixed up for the summer with Olive’s astringent friend, Pearl. Meanwhile, Roo is broke and depressed because he walked off the job in a macho huff when he discovered that some young bloke could cut cane faster than him. Lastly, Olive, barmaid and aging party girl, simply refuses to believe that the keg party is finally winding down.
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Sandra Grand’s direction shows some insecurity with the physical constraints of realism. Although David Davis’s set is really wonderfully homey, Grand can’t seem to make her cast feel at home there. Actors are constantly flitting around as if Grand believed that movement, any movement including hyperactivity, is what holds an audience’s attention. So that when the real rough-and-tumble action starts, it lacks dramatic contrast, and the guys seem self-conscious about harming the set.
