'The human and political story of the last man to be executed in Australia, Remember Ronald Ryan won the 1995 Victorian Premiers Literary Award. Dickins portrays the man behind the legend as lovable, cheeky, courageous, and wretched. This edition includes Ryan, a new monodrama spoken from Ryans perspective that speaks to a new audience from his poor and unmarked grave. (Barry Dickins)' (Publication summary)
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 10 (NSW Stage 5)
Themes
Australian identity, capital punishment, fate, justice, morality, redemption, social class
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Literacy
Guts and Pity : The Hanging That Ended Capital Punishment in Australia
Paddington
:
Currency Press
,
1996
Z814168
1996
single work
'‘Please admit the bearer…to the execution of Ronald Joseph Ryan, on 3rd February, 1967.’
'This invitation, received by journalists covering the last hanging in Australian history, hints at why Ronald Ryan’s story translates so well into the theatre. For the message sounds like a pass to any ordinary show. And why not? An execution is intended as a performance, an elaborate display of the state’s power over its subjects. But the ghoulish phrasing also illustrates a key theme in Barry Dickins’ Remember Ronald Ryan, in which the Ryan execution represents a bridge between two different eras. The authorities at Pentridge Prison modelled their procedures – and their invitation – on the ancient traditions of English hangmen. But in the Melbourne of 1967 those traditions seemed, like the execution itself, a grotesque legacy of an earlier age.' (Introduction)
