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Ian Dickson

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Some Men In London: Queer life, 1945-1959 edited by Peter Parker

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October 2024, no. 469
Ian Dickson reviews ‘Some Men In London: Queer life, 1945-1959’ edited by Peter Parker

The fifteen years from the end of the World War II to 1960 were in many ways a dark period of queer history in the United Kingdom. The 1920s and 1930s were relatively relaxed in their attitudes to the gay world. As Adam de Hegedus, writing as Rodney Garland, wrote in his novel The Heart in Exile (1953), ‘the war broke down inhibitions and the element of danger made sex rampant. Public opinion was lax and the understaffed police had many other things on their minds.’

... (read more)

Advances - June-July 2006

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June-July 2006, no. 282

Last month it was autobiography’s turn, when David McCooey examined recent Australian memoirs (La Trobe University Essay, ABR, May 2006). Now it is biography’s turn: the genre will be the subject of the 2006 Australian Book Review/La Trobe University Annual Lecture, titled ‘Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography’. Our distinguished lecturer is Professor Ian Donaldson, Director of the ANU’s Humanities Research Centre, head of the latter’s new Biography Institute, and Consultant Editor for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is a general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (due for publication in twenty-five volumes in 2007), and is completing a life of Jonson for OUP.

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Critic of the Month with Ian Dickson

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April 2024, no. 463
Critic of the Month with Ian Dickson

Ian Dickson reviews theatre and books for ABR and is the co-author of the musical Better Known As Bee. As a schoolboy, visiting London in the 1960s to catch Saturday matinees, Ian developed his obsession with the performing arts, which followed him through degrees at the University of NSW and Yale. A lifetime spent one way or another around the theatre has made him understand the importance of the critic to make a record of that most ephemeral art.

... (read more)

2023 Arts Highlights of the Year

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January-February 2024, no. 461
2023 Arts Highlights of the Year

To celebrate the year’s memorable plays, films, television, music, operas, dance, and exhibitions, we invited a number of arts professionals and critics to nominate their favourites.  

... (read more)

The Master & Margarita 

Belvoir St Theatre
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20 November 2023
'The Master & Margarita: A glorious production of Bulgakov at Belvoir' by Ian Dickson

Don’t contradict strange gentlemen. Take special care around the George Street light rail. Watch out for flying pigs. Treat any black cat you might meet with caution, especially ones that speak to you. Woland and his satanic crew have taken up residence at Belvoir.

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The Letters of Oscar Hammerstein II edited by Mark Eden Horowitz

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May 2023, no. 453
Ian Dickson reviews 'The Letters of Oscar Hammerstein II', edited by Mark Eden Horowitz

In the history of the American musical, Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) presents us with what his Siamese king would have described as a puzzlement. Lacking the sophistication of Cole Porter, the verbal dexterity of Lorenz Hart, and the sly wit of Ira Gershwin, his lyrics, taken out of context, can seem hokey and sentimental. Will he ever be forgiven for The Sound of Music’s ‘lark who is learning to pray’? And yet it is his works, written in collaboration with Richard Rodgers, that are constantly revived rather than the flimsier concoctions of his more favoured contemporaries. 

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Into the Woods 

Belvoir St Theatre
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24 March 2023
Tamsin Carroll as the Witch (photograh by Christopher Hayles)
‘Into the woods to get the thing /That makes it worth the journeying.’ Belvoir is luring us into the dark mysterious forest, the setting of so many fairy tales and of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical, Into the Woods. ... (read more)

The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? 

Sydney Theatre Company
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06 March 2023
Claudia Karvan, Mark Saturno and Nathan Page (photograph by Prudence Upton)
In a tastefully designed, beautifully arranged living room, a couple are engaging in the sort of mildly erotic verbal jousting in which long and happily married couples might indulge. They are Martin Gray, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect, just turned fifty, who has been chosen to design a futuristic, two-hundred-billion-dollar World City and his, in his words, bright, resourceful, intrepid wife, Stevie. ... (read more)

Amadeus 

Red Line Productions
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30 December 2022
Michael Sheen as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (photograph by Sydney Opera House)
Amadeus is English playwright Peter Shaffer’s most resilient work. Antonio Salieri’s battle with both his god and his rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been frequently performed and revived, with actors of the calibre of Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, and David Suchet as Salieri, and Simon Callow, Tim Curry, and Michael Sheen as Mozart. It says a lot for the play’s durability that so much of its power and pertinence can survive a production as basically misguided as the one at present in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. ... (read more)

2022 Arts Highlights of the Year

by Diane Stubbings et al. •
January-February 2023, no. 450
2022 Arts Highlights of the Year

To celebrate the year’s memorable plays, films, television, music, operas, dance, and exhibitions, we invited a number of arts professionals and critics to nominate their favourites.  

... (read more)
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