Review: THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw Friday 4th April 2025.

What an Adelaide occasion. The Dictionary of Lost Words, the book by Pip Williams, adapted for the stage by Verity Lawton, is shared with an Adelaide audience on the stage of the Dunstan Playhouse . I don’t use bourgeois as an insult. A healthy and active middle class who care about and support the arts, who have a strong social conscience, and some disposable income, are vital to the health of a society. They have come out in force to support this play in its return season, and are splendidly rewarded for their investment. There could have been a few smug reactions but there were none. Is it a masterpiece? It certainly distils major issues of power and communication, focussed on the life of one woman. It certainly is a superb example of stage and theatre craft. The cast of many backgrounds creates an Anglo community before your eyes and ears.

The performance style, familiar from last year’s Jack Maggs, features cross-gender casting, a flexible set, and a small, hardworking cast of such confidence. Their changes of costume and accent were part of the fun, and there is much fun in this production. A significant theme is the battle for the vote, the suffragists and the suffragettes, in parallel with the collection of women’s words, words lost, discarded, devalued, and degraded. At one point, it is remarked that women in South Australia already have the vote. Score one for us.

This return season blended familiar performers and ones new to the script. Shannen Alyce Quan is unbelievably good as Esme Nicoll. As the child under the table, she has the energy and ego of a very bright child with all the vocal certitude that creates, but as she stands up and moves into maturity she is articulate and focussed. You cannot take your eyes off her.

Johnny Nasser as her father, lexicographer Harry Nicoll is impeccable. He sports the perfect moustache. Brian Meegan brings gravitas to the real-life Sir James Murray, who supervises the work of the Scriptorium, the ‘Skrippy’, as principal editor of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language on Historical Principles. He leads the ritual salute to the letters under discussion. It’s the loss of the word ‘bondmaid’, the fallen piece of paper submitted for inclusion, that sets off Esme’s lifetime quest. It is the first of the words to be lost.

Angela Nica Suelllen does portly lexicographer, Arthur Mailing, with confidence but, as the actress turned suffragist, Tilda Taylor, she is voluptuous, intellectual, and commanding. James Smith is Frederick Sweatman of the dictionary crew, and also Bill Taylor, Tilda’s brother and the father of Esme’s illegitimate child. Arkia Ashraf creates Gareth, the compositor who becomes Esme’s husband. He has fine presence, but his accent is a slightly strangled English, fascinating to listen to. The two significant women in Esme’s life are beautifully realised. Kathryn Adams has the faithful Lizzie, the bondmaid, to her fingertips, and Ksenja Logos, as the supportive mother figure, Ditte, is a treasure.

The final scene appears anticlimactic as Esme’s daughter, exported to Australia after birth, appears as a senior academic giving her valedictory lecture. At her feet, the battered old case that Esme had commandeered from Lizzie to be her Museum of Lost Words.

My first few minutes were spent fascinated by the set. Two overlapping walls of pigeon holes, eleven deep and so many long, each of them individually lit, and each containing a small trinket, souvenir, or fold of paper. It’s something only possible with a professional budget and a hard-working workshop crew and stage management.

Photography, Prudence Upton.

The national tour continues at these venues.
Adelaide April 3 to April 17 – Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide
Brisbane April 26 to May 10 – Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, South Brisbane
Canberra May 15 to May 24 – Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra
Wollongong May 29 to June 7 – Merrigong Theatre Company, Wollongong

Australia - Adelaide Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. BONNIE AND CLYDE (The Arts Theatre)

24.2% of votes

2. COME FROM AWAY (The Arts Theatre)

23.2% of votes

3. BILLY ELLIOT (Northern Light Theatre Company)

17.5% of votes

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