The Dictionary of Lost Words by
Pip Williams. Adapted for the stage by Verity Laughton.
Directed by Jessica Arthur. Set
designer Jonathon Oxlade. Costume designer Ailsa Paterson. Composer and sound
designer Max Lyandvert.Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest. Assistant Director
Shannon Rush. Cast: Kathryn
Adams, Arkia Ashraf, Ksenja Logos, Brian Meegan, Johnny Nasser, Angela Nica
Sullen, Shannen Alyce Quan and James Smith. The Playhouse. Canberra
Theatre. May 15-24 2025. Bookings 62752700.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
You do not need to have read Pip
Williams’s enormously successful The Dictionary
of Lost Words to fully appreciate
and be rapt in Verity Laughton’s spellbinding adaptation. I sat absorbed in
Williams’s story of the wonder of words and her ingenious concept to view the
creation of the Oxford English Dictionary through the prism of the magic of
words and their meanings as seen by the play’s protagonist Esme Nicoll. Esme
is the daughter of Harry Nicoll, a lexicographer on Dr. James Murray’s team
to record all the words of the English language. Widower Nicoll brings his
daughter to the Scriptorium or "Scrippy", a transformed garden shed at the back of Murray’s residence in Oxford where
Esme waits under a table while her father and the team of lexicographers and
copyists undertake the enormous task of cataloguing and sorting the words on
postcard sized paper under their alphabetical letters. One day a card falls to
the floor and is quickly retrieved by Esme. Significantly the word is Bondmaid
referring to slavery and a woman’s lot in life to serve until death. And so
begins the curious four year old’s quest to discover and uncover words
pertaining to women that have been lost, overlooked and discarded from the Oxford
English Dictionary. What follows is Esme’s quest for identity and meaning
through the words that she discovers and stores in a chest belonging to Murray’s
maid Lizzie Lester.
 |
| Shannen Alyce Quan as Esme Nicholls |
Laughton has skilfully condensed
Williams’s epic story into an engrossing and fascinating theatrical account,
not only of the nature of language and its different meanings but of the woman’s
place in that recording and the differences between men and women and how the
words pertain to their experience. In adapting The Dictionary of Lost Words and realizing the book as a work for
the theatre, Laughton and director Jessica Arthur have faithfully represented
and embellished author Williams’s intent to place the woman’s experience at the
very heart of her novel. In a male dominated society of the Victorian era in
which the creation of the first English dictionary was defined by the older
white males, the character of Esme is not only strikingly illuminating but
vital to understand the differences and the similarities that exist between men
and women and therefore the different ways in which the use of the language
defines gender. We see Esme grow from an insatiably curious and highly
intelligent four year old to a teenager experiencing the shock of a first
period to a grown womn searching out a career in lexicography to a woman
tasting her first experience of sexual intimacy and the painful experience of
an unwanted pregnancy and the uniquely female experience of childbirth. We see
her growing passion for female rights through involvement with suffragette
activist Tilda Taylor (Angela Nica Sullen) and a woman’s helpless experience of
loss and grief at wartime.
 |
| Esme and Tilda Taylor (Angela Nica Sullen) |
As a male member of the audience
I am acutely aware of not only how
language and words define who we are and how different meanings impact on our
view of ourselves and the world but also of the significance of the unifying
force of the word Love in contrast to
the definition of Bondmaid. The co-production of The Dictionary of Lost Words by the State
Theatre Company of South Australia with the Sydney Theatre Company touches the heart and opens the mind. Jonathon
Oxlade’s ingenious design of a wall of pigeon holes becomes a repository
for words or a collection of curiosities or house lights in Trent Suidgeest’s clever lighting design. The changing scenes and timelines are evocatively underscored
by Max Lyandvert’s beautifully composed score from the playful opening music to
the soulful strains of The Bonnie Banks o' Loch
Lomond. Dates and locations are displayed on a screen while Arthur directs
a fluid and mesmerizing production that fascinates, enlightens, captivates and
moves us to tears or elicits gales of laughter in the scene in Covered Market
where Mabel (Ksenja Logan ) teaches Esme the meaning of c**t.
 |
| Esme, Mabel, and Lizzie at Covered Market |
A uniformly
strong cast bring Laughton’s adaptation to life with verve and relish. The
actors change roles with ease and absolute conviction. Only Johnny Nasser as Harry Nicoll, Brian Meegan as Sir. James Murray and Shannen Alyce Quan as Esme retain the one role. Quan gives an incandescent performance from the
delightfully effervescent young child to the perplexed teenager, the lovestruck
young woman, the feisty suffragette and the grief stricken war widow. Quan runs
the gamut of emotion and experience in a performance that is uplifting, moving,
powerful and affirmative. There is excellent support from Johnny Nasser as Esme’s
father, Kathryn Adams as Lizzie Lester, Mrs. Smyth and Maria,
Ksenja Logos as Mabel, Ditte and suffragettes Alice and Megan, Brian Meegan as
Sir James Murray, Arkia Ashraf as Gareth Owen and Mr. Crane, James Smith as
Bill Taylor and Frederick Sweatman and Angela Nica Sullen as Tilda Taylor,
Sarah and Arthur Mayling.
 |
| Harry Nicoll (Johnny Nasser) and Esme (Shannen Alyce Quan) |
It comes as no surprise that Pip
Williams’s original story should have garnered so many awards and adulation.
This production is a noble tribute to the book and a fascinating and
heart-warming theatrical delight in its own right. Apparently the Canberra
Season is unsurprisingly sold out. I still urge you to try however you may to
get a ticket, This is a theatrical treat that you won’t want to miss.
