Review: Ruby Moon

Ruby Moon
Steam Productions
31 May 2012
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 17 June
steamproductions.com.au

Ruby Moon put on her favourite red dress and went to visit her grandma at the end of her cul de sac. She never made it and hasn't been seen since. Her parents are still in the same house and spend every day lost in the unbearable grief of trying to find their little girl.

Sydney-formed Steam Productions chose Matt Cameron's 2003 play for their first Melbourne show.
Cameron's script starts with a fairy tale and enjoys the macabre horror of these traditional stories. It's been on state company stages and schools programs and,  like Poor Boy, which opened the MTC's Sumner Theatre, it's a story that keeps its audience uneasy by never really answering its own questions and its final act reveal leaves us re-interpreting everything that's gone before and wanting a rewind button to see it all again.

The Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond have a tiny theatre space in what was once the front room of a single front cottage. It's an ideal choice of venue for this story as it brings its audience almost into the living room with them, allowing for no hiding beyond or behind the fourth wall.

Director Rachel Baring (Short and Sweet) is back in Melbourne after completing a graduate year studying Directing at NIDA. She places the story firmly into the broken minds and hearts of the parents and only hints at the super natural and fairy tale elements. This lets it feel more like a mystery that could find an answer in the packages of broken dolls and strangely unhelpful neighbours, and creates the freedom to indulge in the dark comedy. But it also leaves a slightly uneven tone, especially as she ultimately ensures that it's a work about grief.

Sarah Ogden (Moth) and Scott Gooding (Eric, Faust) are the parents and everyone on their street who were there the day Ruby disappeared. Their honest and heartfelt performances start with guilt and they let their characters fight the hurt that they know has probably already drowned them. Both bring the internal to the surface, but maybe in such a small venue, leaving more of it hidden will create an even greater intimacy with the audience. In such a close and closed room, hints of "acting" create safety barriers, and one of this show's many strengths is its uncomfortable atmosphere .

I also wonder if there's meant to be hope for the parents. As their grief is so unfair that there may never be a moment of comfort or rest again, more of a hint of the life that created Ruby could give the audience a touch of hope and comfort that can draw them deeper into the story and intensify the ongoing dread.

As is Annie, Ruby Moon is about a little girl in a red dress, but it's the dark and sobering antithesis to the life-is-fair musical. (Or maybe it's the real story of Annie's lost parents.) Without safety nets, its raw pain draws us into unimaginable grief as its mystery leaves us re-thinking what we believed and our hearts hope for the impossible.

Just book, because there's no room for extra seats. It's engagement isn't easy, but there's beauty in the pain and it'll remind you why watching passive theatre can be so dull.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

And here are some writing tips from Matt Cameron, from Snodger Media's What I Wrote series, seen on the ABC and available on DVD.

Poor Boy

Poor Boy
Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company
27 February 2009
Sumner Theatre

The Melbourne Theatre Company opened the shiny, brand-spanking-new Sumner Theatre this very-hot week with a shiny, new, very hot Australian work.
 
Poor Boy is described as “a play with songs”. Matt Cameron’s script weaves with Tim Finn’s music from over the last 30 years, including songs from Spit Enz and his solo work.
 
This highly original work is not a piece of musical theatre. The songs are not part of the plot and used like an emotional commentary. The story stands by itself without the music and the music tells its own story without the play. As neither is dependent upon the other, they support and strengthen each other to create something surprisingly powerful and unexpectedly moving.
 
‘Poor Boy’ is also the title of a song from Split Enz’s album ‘True Colours’. (Remember, “My love is alien” with lots of dated swishy synth.)This was my favourite album of 1980 (constant playing of “I hope I never” got me though much tween-heartbreak) and still makes it onto my iPod. Ian McDonald’s arrangements make the music feel like it was written for the story, while Cameron’s script captures Finn’s recurring natural motifs and recreates the mood of each song through a completely different story.
 
When Jem turns seven, he claims to be adult Danny who died several years ago. Truths are and secrets are revealed as both families cope with the loss of a son. Cameron places the supernatural and the extraordinary well within the ordinary and recognisable world of the two families, while developing a sense of wonder and a dreamlike detachment. The MTCS’s companion piece Grace deals with similar themes, but Poor Boy is so much more powerful because the playwright never questions the truth of the situation and lets the beliefs of the characters guide the audience to their own conclusions.
 
Cameron’s perfectly crafted writing surprises at each turn and concludes so perfectly that you could never imagine it being anything else. Each character had their own complete and engaging story and balance within the overall plot. His complex imagery of water, digging, biblical heroes and zebras seems ridiculous as I write it, but beautiful on the stage and forms the lyrical base of the script. The dialogue sounds slightly unnatural, but it clearly comes from the unspoken and unconscious thoughts of the characters and conversations that are more fluid would break the haunting atmosphere.
 
The star-power of Guy Pearce as Danny will bring many people to Poor Boy – and rightly so. Pearce on stage is as enigmatic and addictive as he is on film. He puts the character before his performance and makes you completely forget you are watching an actor.
 
The rest of the cast (Greg Stone, Linda Cropper, Matt Dykrunski, Sara Gleeson, Abi Tucker, Sarah Peirse and a rotating cast of three boys) are equally as outstanding, and Simon Phillips’s direction steps back to let the script and music speak for themselves while discretely helping when a little more is needed.
 
The love that the creative team have for this work spills from the stage. There is never a moment when it doesn’t feel like this is something very special and it’s wonderful to sit amongst an audience who can feel and share this sense of pride and wonder.
 
This time last year I was saying how consistently disappointed I was with the MTC. Perhaps the move to the terrific new theatre has released some demons. Poor Boy is setting the bar high for what this company should always producing and I hope I never have to see a lesser production again.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com