Date/Time
Date(s) - 11 Feb 2012
4:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Location
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne

‘a stunning success … a play so superbly true to Australian thought’ – The Argus (1955)

‘a cornerstone of modern Australian drama’ – The New York Times

For sixteen summers, Roo and Barney have spent their long layoff from the cane-cutting season down in Melbourne having a high old time with two Carlton barmaids, Olive and Nancy. It has been a carefree ritual that never looked like ending. But back for their seventeenth summer, the blokes find that Nancy got married and Olive has roped in a friend, Pearl, to take her place. And for a while they all do a fair job of kidding themselves that time has not finally caught up with them.

The day we premiered Ray Lawler’s groundbreaking play in 1955 marked the beginning of modern Australian drama. This story of shattered illusions has been revived many times since, but never with such imagination and heart as in Neil Armfield’s new production.

Photography by Marcel Aucar