Ian Dickson Ian Dickson i(A16706 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Wherever She Wanders : The Ormond Scandal in the #MeToo Age Ian Dickson , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 438 2021; (p. 66)

— Review of Wherever She Wanders Kendall Feaver , 2020 single work drama

'On the evening of Wednesday, 16 October 1991, after the annual Valedictory Dinner at Melbourne University’s august Ormond College, the Master allegedly made unprovoked sexual advances to two female students. These reported incidents led to a scandal which rocked the Melbourne establishment, caused the exit of the Master (whose conviction on charges of indecent assault was overturned on appeal), and became the basis of Helen Garner’s hugely controversial exploration of sexual politics, class, and power, The First Stone (1995).' (Introduction)

1 y separately published work icon On the Australian Poet Francis Webb John Hawke (presenter), Ian Dickson (presenter), 2021 23441898 2021 single work podcast 'Francis Webb, an Australian poet born in 1925, was widely regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most gifted poets of his generation. His creative output was extensive, despite a troubled life living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. His first major poem, ‘A Drum for Ben Boyd’, appeared in book form when he was only twenty-two. In today’s episode, listen to ABR’s Sydney theatre critic Ian Dickson read the poem in its entirety.' 

(Production summary)

1 Yielding to Temptation : Kip Williams's Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray Ian Dickson , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 68)

— Review of The Picture of Dorian Gray Kip Williams , 2020 single work drama
1 New Rights of Passage : Theatregoing in the Covid Era Ian Dickson , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 426 2020; (p. 61)

— Review of Wonnangatta Angus Cerini , 2020 single work drama

'Theatre emerged from ritual and the present circumstances have introduced new rites of passage for those who take part in the ceremony. Donning your mask, you perform the cleansing of hands, stand at attention as your temperature is taken, and enter an eerily under-populated lobby in which other masked figures attempt to keep a prescribed distance as they head for the inner sanctum. Once inside it is easy to find your allotted place, one of the few seats not cordoned off. Looking around at the handful of other attendees seemingly randomly scattered around the auditorium, it feels more like a final dress rehearsal than an actual performance. Welcome to theatre-going in the Covid-19 era.' (Introduction)

1 [Review] Packer & Sons Ian Dickson , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January / February no. 418 2020; (p. 67)

— Review of Packer & Sons Tommy Murphy , 2019 single work drama

'You would have to be living under a rock the size of Uluru not to be aware of the reassessment of the masculine sense of dominance and entitlement that is sweeping the Western world at the moment. From an American president who has openly boasted of assaulting women to a member of the royal family who, in an interview about his relationship with a notorious paedophile, blithely ignores the damage that this man and his cohorts inflicted on young women, we have seen a stunning lack of empathy towards the less powerful and well connected. In the business world, some consider this to be a requisite for success. It has become something of a truism to claim, as does Jon Ronson in his controversial book The Psychopath Test, that a high percentage of CEOs have psychopathic tendencies.'(Introduction)

1 A Cheery Soul Ian Dickson , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 407 2018; (p. 68-69)

'This reviewer has the unfashionable opinion, at present, that Patrick White, like Henry James, was a novelist and short story writer of genius who had an unfortunate obsession with the stage. In the 1960s, the nascent Adelaide Festival produced the one play of his that deserves repetition, The Season at Sarsaparilla (1962)Its success motivated him to write another couple, one of which was A Cheery Soul, which John Sumner directed for the Union Theatre Repertory Company in 1963. More unfortunately, towards the end of his career, he was encouraged to write plays of an increasingly third-rate standard, which diverted him from what could have been his final masterpiece, the novel The Hanging Garden.'  (Introduction)

1 Still Point Turning : The Catherine McGregor Story (Sydney Theatre Company) Ian Dickson , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2018; Australian Book Review , June-July no. 402 2018; (p. 63-64)

'In the introduction to her seminal memoir of life as a transgender person, Conundrum (1974), the author Jan Morris makes it clear that she is not concerned with merely narrating the facts of her condition. ‘What was important’ to relate ‘was the liberty of us all to live as we wished to live, to love however we wanted to love, and to know ourselves, however peculiar, disconcerting or unclassifiable, at one with the gods and angels.'' (Introduction)

1 Ze Icy Hend of Dess : Portrait of a Consummate and Short-lived Conductor Ian Dickson , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 399 2018; (p. 68-69)
1 Away (Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre) Ian Dickson , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2017;

'Away reached the dubious status of ‘Australian Classic’ in a remarkably short period of time. It has become so ubiquitous that I would hazard a guess that fully two thirds of the Australian audience for this production who are under thirty will have been involved with the play either as performers, audience, or students. In the keynote address (‘The Agony and the Agony’) at the National Play Festival that Michael Gow gave in July 2016, required reading for anyone interested in theatre, he describes his ambivalent feelings about having written a work that has become a perennial set text – a sure way of having the life drained out of it. He also says, ‘for me Away is a play about death. In fact it’s an AIDS play, though I didn’t know it at the time.’' (Introduction)

1 Mark Colvin's Kidney (Belvoir St Theatre) Ian Dickson , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2017;

'The theatre has given us mutilation, Titus Andronicus comes to mind, and cannibalism in Thyestes and Sweeney Todd, but as far as I am aware there is no dramatic genre based on organ donorship. After Tommy Murphy’s Mark Colvin’s Kidney, this may well change.' (Introduction)

1 The Bleeding Tree (Sydney Theatre Company) Ian Dickson , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2017;

'Three women are staring into space. They are dazed, in shock, not yet believing that what has just happened has actually occurred. Beneath them is the body of a man, husband and father, whom they have just murdered. So begins the wild, darkly lyrical nightmare ride that is Australian playwright Angus Cerini’s The Bleeding Tree, which won several 2016 Helpmann Awards, including Best Play and Best Direction.'  (Introduction)

1 This Much Is True (Red Line Productions) Ian Dickson , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2017;

'Louis Nowra’s latest play, his first in ten years because apparently and appallingly no major company in Australia has asked him for one, is the third in his semi-autobiographical Lewis trilogy. In Summer of the Aliens (1992), the young Lewis, growing up in housing-commission Melbourne, has to find a way to come to terms with the unpredictable adults who surround him and to deal with his feelings for his coevals. Così (1992) finds a slightly older Lewis attempting to introduce Mozart into the lives of an even more extreme group in a mental hospital, while staggering through a dying relationship. In This Much Is True, a more mature Lewis, now a writer recuperating from a divorce, as much spectator as participant, hangs out in the bar of The Rising Sun, a Woolloomooloo pub not entirely dissimilar to The Old Fitzroy in which the play is being presented. This Much Is True can also be seen as the third piece in another Nowra trilogy, an addendum to his recent love letters to the neighbourhood; King’s Cross (2013) and Woolloomooloo (2017).' (Introduction) 

1 Three Sisters (Sydney Theatre Company) Ian Dickson , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 397 2017; (p. 66) ABR : Arts 2017;

'After decades of English-language Chekhov productions following in the footsteps of Stanislavsky and Komisarjevsky in which historically accurately costumed actors wandered around a stage awash with gloom and torpor declaiming Constance Garnett’s constipated translations, directors finally discovered that the plays were strong enough to be removed from their original place and period. Janet Suzman’s magnificent Cherry Orchard (1997) transported the play to contemporary South Africa and Michael Blakemore, in his film Country Life (1994), showed that Uncle Vanya could work if it were transposed to Western Australia. Recently, Benedict Andrews’s modernised Three Sisters at the Young Vic (2012) was well received. Now the Sydney Theatre Company is presenting its own updated version. One is as unlikely to see a samovar in a contemporary Chekhov production as a horned helmet in a modern production of Wagner’s Ring.' (Introduction)

1 Ghosts (Belvoir St Theatre) Ian Dickson , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 396 2017; (p. 68) ABR : Arts 2017;

'When this production of Henrik Ibsen’s most controversial play was programmed, no one could have guessed how pertinent it would appear in Australia at this moment. On the surface, this account of a bourgeois woman whose attempt to escape from a loveless marriage and a philandering husband is foiled by the Pastor she loved and the conventions of the times, who has to live a lie and finally deal with a beloved son who has inherited syphilis from his father, is of another era. After all, there is now at last understanding and help for those leaving an abusive marriage, and her son’s disease would easily be cured. But Ghosts is about more than these afflictions. The protagonist, Mrs Alving’s, speech to her nemesis, the hidebound, reactionary Pastor Manders, quoted above, is the core of the play. As Robert Brustein writes, Ibsen’s ‘underlying purpose was to demonstrate how a series of withered conventions, unthinkingly perpetuated, could result in the annihilation not only of a conventional family but, by extension, the whole modern world’.' (Introduction)

1 Arts Highlights of the Year Robyn Archer , Ben Brooker , Tim Byrne , Lee Christofis , Alison Croggon , Brett Dean , Ian Dickson , Julie Ewington , Morag Fraser , Andrew Fuhrmann , Colin Golvan , Fiona Gruber , Patrick McCaughey , Brian McFarlane , Primrose Potter , John Rickard , Peter Rose , Dina Ross , Michael Shmith , Doug Wallen , Terri-Ann White , Kim Williams , Jake Wilson , 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 376 2015; (p. 36-42)
'To highlight Australian Book Review's arts coverage and to celebrate some of the year's memorable concerts, operas, films, ballets, plays, and exhibitions, we invited a group of critics and arts professionals to nominate their favourites – and to nominate one production they are looking forward to in 2016. (We indicate which works were reviewed in Arts Update.)' (36)
1 [Review] Fly Away Peter Ian Dickson , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2015; Australian Book Review , June-July no. 372 2015; (p. 39)

— Review of Fly Away Peter Pierce Wilcox , 2015 single work musical theatre
1 Review : Children of the Sun Ian Dickson , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 365 2014; (p. 36)

— Review of Children of the Sun Andrew Upton , 2014 single work drama
1 Review : Hedda Gabler Ian Dickson , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 363 2014; (p. 49)

— Review of Hedda Gabler Adena Jacobs , 2014 single work drama
1 (Review Essay) Once in Royal David’s City Ian Dickson , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 359 2014;

— Review of Once in Royal David’s City Michael Gow , 2014 single work drama

'At a time when a convicted drug smuggler is rumoured to be about to collect a fortune for her remarkably unremarkable story and when we are heading into a new round of so-called ‘culture wars’, in which an extraordinary amount of heat will be generated with precious little light accompanying it, it is refreshing to be presented with another of Michael Gow’s forensic explorations of the world in which we stumble around. From that explosion of fury, pain, and Wagner, The Kid (1983) onwards, Gow has observed society with a ruthless but compassionate eye. Anger and grief are the dominant emotions that fuel his work, and they are very much in evidence in his latest play, Once in Royal David’s City.' (Introduction)

1 Heiaha! Heiaha! Ian Dickson , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 352 2013;

— Review of Wotan's Daughter : The Life of Marjorie Lawrence Richard Davis , 2012 single work biography
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