This Old Man Comes Rolling Home

Redfern early 1950s. A series of scenes without curtain.

A macabre group of children dance and sing around the Old Man, who is asleep. Laurie, swigging sweet sherry, dreams of her glory days as the Belle of Bundaberg. Her husband Tom comes home and complains the place is squalid and the food is inedible. Landy the second son and Edie his girlfriend enter, saying they are expecting a baby and need to marry. They ask Tom to convince Edie’s mother, as Edie is only 16. Tom says that’s how he caught Laurie, aged 17. Laurie warns Edie she will end up like she has. Landy tells Laurie her health issues are all due to alcohol. After they all leave Laurie dances round with her bottle.

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. Don enters and chases out the chorus. He tells his mother to show some dignity, and heads upstairs.

Tom, Landy, Edie and her mother Mrs Keeler arrive. Tom says the young ones are old enough to know their own minds and let them marry. Edie’s mother calls Edie a ‘dirty thing’ and a trollop. Laurie wakes up and suggests an abortion. Mrs Keeler backs off. They all welcome Edie into the Dockertys and Landy and Edie move in.

Pet the second daughter turns up with a pram, saying her husband has left her, and moves in. Laurie gives the baby a bottle and sings a lullaby. She keeps drinking and sings “Oh Sydney I love you” with the Old Man.

Tom is painting the house, singing “The Red Flag”. He is joined by his “offsider” Snowy, who has come to see Julie the eldest daughter. Snowy has “done time”. George the eldest son enters, he has married an older woman with money. Tom and Laurie fight about George’s character. Don enters, Laurie is missing a bracelet and accuses Don of stealing it. Edie says she can’t take it, doing all the housework for everyone and looking after Pet’s baby as well, and says she has to move out. Pet takes her baby back to her husband. Julie arrives from apple-picking in Tasmania with her English friend, Fay. Snowy recites bush poetry with Julie. Everyone dances or sings. Julie tells Fay they are all mad but lovable. Don gives Fay a bracelet (presumably his mother’s). Laurie recites “The Lady of Shallott”.

Don likes Fay because she is "easy". Tom tells Julie that Snow has been in jail. Snowy and Julie get together and go to the pub. Tom and Joycee go out to paint slogans. Tom runs off and the police bribe Joycee with lollies, but she misdirects them. Edie goes into labour and Joycee tries to get Laurie to help, but she is too drunk. A neighbour is found.

Don tries to shake off Fay, as they’ve "had their fun", but Fay is pregnant. Don tells her to get an abortion, and to pay for it with the bracelet. Fay says she’ll kill herself and haunt him. They exit. Tom enters drunk. He has punched the foreman while defending Snowy and he has been given the sack. Julie tells Tom and Snowy they are both weak. She cries as Snowy leaves. A policeman arrives and Don thinks Fay must have committed suicide. Tom pushes Don at Laurie in disgust, but she is lost in dreams of Bundaberg. The police arrest Don over stolen jewellery.

Snowy recites bush poetry at Julie’s window, saying he’s off North. Julie talks wistfully to the Old Man. George enters, is asked for money and calls them all parasites. Laurie orders him out. George gives Laurie a fiver “for herself” . Landy and Edie, now with a baby, give up their house deposit for Don’s legal defence. Laurie goes down the pub with her fiver. The chorus enter, talking about weather and old age. It is revealed that Fay died of an illegal abortion. The workers in the plant recover Tom’s job by working to regulation. Laurie returns with the pram half-filled with bottles and they all sing “Wild Rover”. Pet turns up pregnant again. The Old Man speaks of people breeding and dying like sparrows.

Dorothy Hewett and baby Joe Flood, Redfern 1951. Joe became an international authority on slums

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.[15]

She had lived in Redfern from 1949 to 1952, and was impressed by the indomitable spirit, resilience and camaraderie of the working-poor community of Redfern, who lived under vulnerable and difficult slum conditions. The Dockertys were based on a family who lived just down the street.

The play is written in the style of romantic naturalism, with "symbolism, surrealism and theatricality".[16] There are touches of socialist realism, in the elevation of the working class, the disparagement of class traitors like George, the industrial action to save Tom’s job, and the slogan writing episode. 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.

Even in 1968, at the time of the first Sydney performance, the "old Sydney" and its slums were disappearing. The influential theatre critic Harry Kippax was famously heard to say when departing the theatre, “Old old old, get me a taxi.”[4] Challenged as being out-of-date, Hewett seldom wrote about the urban working class again.

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. This might have meant that the play would not be relevant to the 21st century. 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. The play has continued to be produced for over 50 years, attracting good audiences.

In 2013 an Adelaide production of "This Old Man" was advertised almost as a curiosity, as a "legend of Australian theatre".[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. A modern middle-class theatre-going audience is left bewildered and alienated”.[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.[20]