Welcome to 12 1/2 Plymouth Street, in Sydney's Surry Hills. This is the home of the Aussie Irish Catholic family The Darcys as lovingly told by Award winning author Ruth Park. In The Harp in the South and Poor Man's Orange, Park tells of the trials and tribulations of growing up in a Sydney slum in the years immediately following the Second World War.
In Poor Man's Orange we see the changing world of the Darcys in the 1950s. The narrow-gutted, dirty old house is now home to Mumma (Anne Phelan), dad Hughie (Martyn Sanderson), Dolour (Kaarin Fairfax) and her elder sister Roie (Anna Hruby), who lives in one of the upstairs rooms with her husband Charlie Rothe (Shane Connor) and their little girl, Moira (Emily Nicol), who calls herself Motty. Instinctively Dolour comes to realise that only the second-best is hers - the 'Poor Man's Orange' with its bitter rind and paler flesh and its stinging, exultant, unforgettable tang. So she will have it that way, and wish it no other way.
The first chapter of the Darcy's story is told in the companion DVD "The Harp in the South".