This Old Man Comes Rolling Home
This Old Man Comes Rolling Home, Dorothy Hewett's first full-length play, was written in 1965.
It captures the spirit and character of Redfern, an inner-city suburb of Sydney sometimes called "Australia's last slum".
The family is subject to various stresses, most significantly because the mother is an alcoholic, largely lost in dreams of her youth.
The play is as much about language as plot, and contains engaging and humorous quotations in the Australian idiom of the time.
The dialogue consists of interactions between the family members, or it evokes a mystical Sydney expressed by a chorus of old ladies and an Old Man.
The room has old furniture, household detritus, some Communist literature, and one picture, of a radiant Laurie as the Belle of Bundaberg.
Her husband Tom comes home and complains the place is squalid and the food is inedible.
The chorus Daisy, Pansy and Violet enter from the pub, and talk about drinking, slum clearance, the weather, the old man on the bench, and their memories of the Redfern community.
The first performance by a professional company was in 1968 at the Old Tote in Sydney, directed by Jean Wilhelm and starred Ron Haddrick as Tom and Betty Lucas as Laurie.
[2] Hewett wrote the first draft of "This Old Man", her first full-length play, in 1957, but it was burned with all her other work in early 1958 by her partner Les Flood.
[14] She resumed the play in her university room overlooking the New Fortune Theatre while she was supposed to be working on her Masters of Arts Thesis.
[4] It was submitted under the pseudonym of "Liz Trigg" to the Mary Gilmore Award for a three-act play in 1964, and commended.
The Greek chorus of women from the Hen’s Lounge and the recitals of bush poetry were departures from the expected style of the time.
English-trained actors had difficulty coming to terms with the idiom and accents of traditional Australian culture.
[17] Apart from the fairytale elements, the play was a fair description of family life in a disadvantaged area, when one of the adults is disabled by alcoholism.
The critically acclaimed British and American TV series "Shameless", shown from 2004, had a similar theme and dynamic.
The ‘battlers’ (usually the white urban working poor) have been steadily disappearing in Australia, as incomes have improved and the base for immigration has broadened.
However, the nostalgia for lost Australian idiom and culture has grown, and the humour and language of the author has retained the interest of audiences.
[11] A feminist critic pointed out, "The greatest victims in this piece are the women who do not have the power to shape their own destiny".
[18] A young critic stated, “Almost everything else (alcoholism, poverty, marriage, politics) is depicted to garish extremity.
[19] Yet the play accurately depicts an Australia remembered by many living Australians – and its circumstances are familiar to a billion slum dwellers throughout the world.
