Roses In Due Season

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".