the ruby sunrise
THE RUBY SUNRISE, Ensemble Theatre, 8 October – 14 November 2009. Images by Steve Lunam.
The choice of this 2005 American play as the 100th directorial stint for Ensemble mistress-mind Sandra Bates is an odd one. It is neither fish nor fowl, comedy nor drama; rather it teeters back and forth and round and round like some weird playground apparatus, throwing audience and cast in an increasingly incomprehensible whirl of directions and destinations.
Playwright Rinne Groff has a substantial CV although her work doesn’t seem to have travelled beyond the US. If this play is typical, it can only be a blessing. It’s difficult to tell, however, because the production itself is disjointed and unconvincing and gives little assistance in figuring out what in hell is happening, supposed to be happening or might be happening. The question shouts to be answered: why?
The story: Ruby is a young girl whose skill and passion for engineering results in her inventing television in her mean old aunty’s barn. Unfortunately, big corporations and big white male inventors get there at the same time and win out. She is supposed to marry a nice goofy young man to escape the clutches of her mean old daddy, but the young man burns down her workshop and all her equipment. Dreams dashed, life ruined. Years later Ruby’s illegitimate daughter is working in the new medium as a “script girl” and trying to get her mama’s story made. She discovers that Ruby was actually the arsonist, which blows a big hole in her proto-feminist narrative.
That’s all fiction, however, so when the TV drama crew find themselves caught up in the fear and horrors of the McCarthy witch hunt, history suddenly crashes uncomfortably and inexplicably into an unlikely and hole-filled melodrama that is also decorated with dollops of farce and caricatured comic playing. The result is bizarre and sometimes downright offensive – particularly as it relates to the ridiculing of the female characters.
In order of appearance Matilda Ridgway, Jonathan Prescott, Amanda Muggleton, Catherine McGraffin, Glenn Hazeldine, Paul Gleeson and Hollie Andrew are valiant in their efforts to make sense of this farrago of cliches, but it’s all in vain. Each has moments but none of them hang together or make sense. And if that isn’t painful enough, it drags on for two and a half hours. The less said, the better.
