Ian Dickson

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**The ABR Podcast**

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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The red thread: Xi Jinping’s ideology of power

by Neil Thomas

This week on The ABR Podcast, Neil Thomas reviews On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world by Kevin Rudd. Thomas explains that even China watchers find it hard to be clear on the thoughts and plans of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. They disagree, he tells us, on basic, critical questions, such as for how long Xi will rule. ‘Enter Kevin Rudd’, Thomas writes. ‘In his latest book, former prime minister Kevin Rudd adds a worthy new chapter to his life of public service, digesting thousands of pages of “Xi Jinping Thought” so that you do not have to’. Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington DC. Here is Neil Thomas with 'The red thread: Xi Jinping's ideology of power' by Neil Thomas, published in the December issue of ABR.

Recent episodes:

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

by Ian Dickson •

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.’

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Advances - June-July 2006

by Australian Book Review •

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

by Australian Book Review •

April 2024, no. 463

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.

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2023 Arts Highlights of the Year

by Ian Dickson et al. •

January-February 2024, no. 461

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.

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The Master & Margarita

Belvoir St Theatre

by Ian Dickson •

20 November 2023

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

by Ian Dickson •

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

by Ian Dickson •

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

by Ian Dickson •

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

by Ian Dickson •

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

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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