You probably haven’t heard of Oriel Gray or The Torrents, but in 1955 it was the joint winner of the Playwrights’ Advisory Board Competition with Australia’s most famous play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. It’s been rarely performed since the 1950s, making it a hugely neglected classic – and look, that’s probably because it wasn’t written by a man. Director Clare Watson is working with Virginia Gay to polish up the George Bernard Shaw-esque comedy and ensure the humour all zings.
Rosehaven star Celia Pacquola plays JG Milford, a woman who shows up to take on a job at a local paper in a small outback town in the 1890s. None of the townsfolk realises that JG is a woman and the J stands for “Jenny”.
Sydney Theatre Company's artistic director Kip Williams says: “I hope that one of the outcomes of us staging it is that it’s reasserted in its rightful place as one of the great Australian plays of the 20th century.”