ABSTRACT
The reality of sweeping displacement after the turmoil of the war was evident – the country had been irrevocably changed, not the least through successive waves of European migrants in the postwar years, and many of the returning servicemen found it difficult to adjust to a different reality. The celebrated and influential play by Ray Lawler, The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, set in the immediate postwar years, taps into the apprehension of a new world order, and has had a significant impact on later artistic output. The old idea of mateship, as exclusively white, Anglo and male, is seen as incompatible with the changing nature of Australian society. Adapting such a well-known and loved work was always going to be controversial, and its reception was mixed in both its Melbourne and Sydney seasons. The language of Cloudstreet is similarly infused with the Australian vernacular, often with a strikingly humorous effect, but is simultaneously both poetic and lyrical.
