Ray Lawler, who died last week at 103, was one of the artists responsible for establishing the first non-commercial repertory theatre in Australia – the Union Repertory Theatre Company, now Melbourne Theatre Company – and the writer of its best-known play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
Challenges continued into rehearsals. In 1965, Niall Brennan, the Union Theatre’s front of house manager, recalled:
