AustLit

'‘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)