Ian Dickson
Ian Dickson has degrees in drama from Yale and the University of New South Wales, and is the co-author of the musical Better Known As Bee.
Brian Friel’s play Faith Healer is now considered to be, if not his masterpiece Translations (1980) probably takes that distinction at least one of his most successful works, but it took a while before its sneakily subverted approach to truth and illusion was appreciated. Its 1979 Broadway première, directed by José Quintero and starring James Mason no less, lasted a mere twenty performances. ... (read more)
In his introduction to the Folio Society edition of Twelfth Night, Peter Hall describes the play as a transitional work. Moving on from the light-heartedness of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Twelfth Night Shakespeare mixes grief and cruelty in with the comedy. We are advancing towards the dark, complex world of Measure for Measure. Both Viola and Olivia are consumed with grief for the loss of thei ... (read more)
Arthur Miller's reputation as the writer of glum naturalistic problem dramas is undergoing a re-evaluation at present. The fashionable director Ivo van Hove's ecstatically reviewed and Tony Award-winning production of A View from the Bridge stripped the play back to reveal its archetypal classic structure, and his brilliantly staged, if infuriatingly wrong-headed, approach to The Crucible, at pres ... (read more)
At any time, Washington, DC would be an apposite place in which to stage Wagner's vast cautionary saga about the devastating effects of greed and lust for power on the human and natural world, but it is excruciatingly so at this moment. On Pennsylvania Avenue, roughly halfway between the White House and the Capitol, is a vast sign which reads COMING 2016: TRUMP. It is, however, not an election pos ... (read more)
Do we really need another slim volume on the great Stephen Sondheim? Along with innumerable reviews, essays, and articles, we have Craig Zadan's account of Sondheim's early career, Sondheim & Co (1974), Meryle Secrest's Stephen Sondheim: A Life (1998), and the promise of a definitive biography from the critic David Benedict. If that were not enough, we also have Sondheim's conclusive reflectio ... (read more)
As with London buses, one waits for ages for a film based on the life of that vocal phenomenon Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944), and then two arrive simultaneously. Add to the mix Maggie Smith's Miss Shepherd in The Lady in the Van and it seems to be open season on eccentric ladies of a certain age with thwarted musical ambitions.
Florence Foster Jenkins, who favoured Mme Jenkins or even som ... (read more)
Gentles, perchance you'll wonder at this showThat comes to us with fanfare from abroad.Mike Bartlett's many earlier plays, like Cock,Gave us no indication he would writeA drama in blank verse about a kingThat's yet to be. It could perhaps have beenA heavy-handed satire like MacbirdThe sixties Barbara Garson play in whichMad LBJ dispatches JFK,Or else a sprightly Spitting Image sketch.But author Ba ... (read more)
In this era of the jukebox musical, it is not surprising that the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century equivalent, the pasticcio opera, should be undergoing a revival. A couple of seasons ago, New York's Metropolitan Opera created a version, The Enchanted Island, which received a mainly positive response. Now Musica Viva and Victorian Opera have combined to produce their own version, Voyage to the ... (read more)
To his critics, James Merrill was at best a petit maître, a composer of exquisitely manufactured lyrics that reflected his privileged life and over-refined sensibilities. When he won Yale's Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the editorial writer for The New York Times wearily deplored the judges' preference for 'literary' poets. This prompted a sharp response from the critic Helen Vendler, one of Merril ... (read more)