Roses In Due Season

March 5th, 1980 — March 28th, 1980


Venue

La Boite Theatre, Brisbane

Producer

La Boite Theatre

Director

Malcolm Blaylock

Playwright

Doreen Clarke

Cast

Bev Langford
Narelle Arcicdiacono
Rhonda Carling-Rodgers
Mac Hamilton
Meg Simpson

Set Designer

Sean Mee

Lighting Designer

Leonard Bauska

Sound Designer

Leonard Bauska


Roses in Due Season by Doreen Clarke

Doreen Clarke’s Roses in Due Season directed by Blaylock, was the subject of a strongly worded and dismissive review by David Rowbotham. A play about alcoholism, he took exception to the language: “More than an hour of shouting, banality and ‘smut’ has to be endured before interval occurs … there is not an ounce of drama in it”.[i]

Blaylock responded in a Letter to the Editor in a typically calm and reasoned way, pointing out the seriousness of alcoholism as a social problem in Australia and the appropriateness of the language: “To express such a conflict in middleclass, drawing-room language would be to trivialise and ignore the real and pervasive psychological trauma to which the alcoholic and his/her family is subjected”.[ii]

Writer: Christine Comans

David de Pinna wrote:

This was/is a brilliant play and David Rowbotham's review was way off the mark. The play is up there with "Death of a Salesman" and the pathos of Tennessee Williams. Mac Hamilton's portrayal was first class and the play was a stand-out - is and should be revived as it is as relevant today as it was then. I don't know why the reviewer of the time could have failed to see its merits and brilliance. It is up there with Ray Lawlor's " Summer of The Seventeenth Doll".

 


[i] The Courier-Mail, March 3, 1980.

[ii] The Courier-Mail, March 10, 1980.


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