The Tatty Hollow Story, Dorothy Hewett's fifth full-length play, and last of a series of expressionist plays, was written in 1974 after Hewett's move from Perth to Sydney.
Five men and a female psychiatrist gather after seeing graffiti saying "Tatty Hollow". Tatty is their former lover whom they had each presumed dead. While they argue with each other about Tatty, vignettes of their times with Tatty play out.
Setting
A black glossy reflective curved wall (cyclorama) which reflects the actors.
Far left: psychiatrist desk and chair, with radiogram and bar. Stage Centre: Telephone box, containing a dress dummy in a provocative outfit including boa and pearls, with its back to audience. Downstage far right: a heap of rubble and a bath.
Characters
Jo: a psychiatrist, powerful sexy and serene
Ben Trainor: Rich left wing lawyer, Tatty's ex husband
Rod Travers: zoologist and environmentalist
Johnny Apple: boilermaker, uneducated schizophrenic bum
Rube Hannah: Big and brutal, Tatty's first and last lover, owns a laundrette and strip clubs. Professor Robin Truelove: bearded academic, prominent in Labor politics Paul Laureate: student poet, homeless street singer, Tatty's student, early 20s Tatty Hollow: academic. Ageless luscious long-haired blonde, intelligent and romantic, victim and destroyer
Synopsis
In keeping with other expressionist works, the play bends time and reality, with the characters talking at cross-purposes, scenes from different time periods playing simultaneously, and an array of repeated songs and musical motifs, which accelerate as the play progresses.
Act One
Three men enter in sequence to talk to a woman psychiatrist and each other. They all knew each other in the 1940s. They have heard conflicting stories of how Tatty Hollow has died, and are puzzled by graffiti. As they describe Tatty, they play through early scenes with her.
Ben sits with Jo, discussing Tatty somewhat at cross purposes. Tatty was Jo’s school friend, who was somewhat lower-rung socially. She died eating a ham sandwich. She didn’t like women.
Lights come up on Tatty in the bath, quasi-nude. She falls on the floor, with Ben across her. Ben is disappointed with his “first time”. Tatty is going to Melbourne, says goodbye to Ben and she is so fond of him. Jo says Ben hates Tatty and slaps Ben's face.
Rod enters. He and Ben talk about their wives, who hate Tatty. Rod asked Jo to marry him, on the rebound from Tatty. He says Tatty is a former Miss World, and she slashed her wrists after Paul was killed in the Johannesburg Grand Prix. Tatty speaks of living like Garbo and never marrying. Rod has been seeing ghosts of Tatty in the zoo. She ran away with Paul, who was her student and a street poet. Rod and Ben both think Paul is their son with Tatty. Rod hooked up with Tatty when she returned from London, but couldn’t "get it up". Tatty says they’ve all achieved nothing, she wouldn’t want to know any of them. Tatty leaves and Jo says she was magnificent,
Johnny Apple enters. He says Tatty is homeless now in Kings Cross. He had read she jumped off the Three Sisters with Paulie in her arms. She was a queen bee woman and they were all her drones.
Ben and Johnny have a fist fight when Ben comes home unexpectedly and catches him with Tatty. Tatty leaves Ben who keeps Paulie. Johnny and Tatty have a child Paulie too. They go to Russia and China. Johnny thinks Tatty is a triple agent and is poisoning him with China tea.
Johnny thinks Tatty is now haunting them all. He says they will hold a dinner party with all Tatty’s lovers present to flush her out. Rube and Robin will need to be included.
Act Two
Jo, Ben, Rod and Rube are in Jo's apartment. Jo and Rube discuss how she and Tatty were sharing a flat at University in 1942. Rube had been Tatty's first lover but he and Jo were attracted. They play through a love triangle scene with Tatty.
Robin arrives, flirts with Jo, and jeers at Rube's porn business. Ben admires Robin as a creative academic, until Robin says he "got off" with Tatty in the world’s capitals. Conference meetings of Tatty and Robin in Berlin are played out, where Robin is world-weary and Tatty a sophisticate.
Paul Laureate enters in a top hat, dancing, singing and throwing toilet paper. He tries to pick up Tatty, saying she is still beautiful. They will sell poems in the streets. Robin says Paul is his son.
