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.

Review: Short and Sweet 09 Top 30 Week 2

Short and Sweet 09 Top 30 Week 2
Short and Sweet
27 November 2009
Chapel off Chapel

I love the Short and Sweet festival, but this year I can’t find takers for my plus one.

And I don’t blame anyone. It’s like a tin of assorted shortbreads that has been in the cupboard for too many years that are still unappetising after a few festive sherries and even the dog doesn’t want to scoff the treats. At the end of last year’s festival I thought that maybe it needed a year off, but when events take a year off – they tend to never return, so we should be cheering first-time festival director Rachel Baring for creating a program this year. But what can be done to bring Short and Sweet back to can’t-get-enough chocolate ganache and balsamic strawberry tart quality?

Remember when it sold out and the writing was original and crafted and the best directors, performers and companies in town wanted to be involved? This year’s best plays might not have even made the Wildcards of those first years. Perhaps next year could include a ‘best of’ section featuring old favourites. It would set the standard for new scripts and give us something to look forward to.

Or just tell me a story. Please, tell me a story. Think of your favourite film, book or joke. Do you like its conviction or its story? How many children want to be tucked into bed at night asking to be read the junk mail from their local politicians? Who loves being cornered at a party by a bitter sod who tells you the intimate details of their life and as you try to walk away (because you’ve spied a delicious looking tin of shortbreads), but they grab your arm and get upset when you don’t give them a hug because they made you realise that your opinions are wrong and theirs are right?

For the love of Robert McKee*, tell stories. Tell tales with beginnings and middles and ends and action, surprises and change. If you can tell your story in one minute, your play is nine and a half minutes too long.

The only one I enjoyed in Week 2 was Swagman, because the director (Scott Gooding) and cast (whose names aren’t in the program) saw its absurdity and knew that the words alone could induce a coma or a riot, so they grabbed what was intelligent and relevant in the script and made us laugh by taking the rest to such an extreme that we had re-engage our brains and were able to think.

Every play this week could so easily be improved with some honest feedback and a re-draft. Most of them could become really good and a couple of them are, at least, lessons in how not to write. However, it’s a brave thing to put your words in a public forum, knowing that people like me can write whatever we like about them. Of course, everyone want us to write good things, so here’s what I thought was good about them.

Canadian Tuxedo: Terrific hit man set up with twins dressed all in denim and a good rhyme.

Pink Dress: An authentic and engaging relationship between the brother and sister on the stage.

Vienna Syndrome: The script wasn’t half bad and with different direction, it could be very different and much funnier.

King Hit: Had heart and love.

The Swagman's Song: Made me laugh.

The Big C: Let the performers have a go at silly voices.

The Tale of Babboo Sabbi: I too like the view from tall buildings.

Actual Fantasy: The idea of actual fantasy gamers is a fab concept.

The Controlled Use of Heroin: The performances were good.

The Road to Hell: It was a fine joke and it was the only play of the night with an ending.

*If you write and you don’t know who McKee is, please read his book called “Story”. You don’t have to agree with a single word of it and you may know better – but read it anyway.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Week 1
Week 3

Here’s what Tom Doig thought about Week 2

This is set in the future

This is set in the future
La Mama
December 2008

This is set in the future is a traditional Christmas tale of blood, cum and karma, complete with a pseudo Santa resplendent in a tight frock contemplating an even tighter noose. The publicity did say it was more festy than festive…

Glyn Roberts’s not-so-cheery tale explores the not-too-distant future where we could live forever. Will folk get up to acts of selfless good and create heartfelt joy? Not with Robert Reid directing.

As always, director Reid (theatre in decay) hides his hope behind a large wall of cynicism. He despairs in his program notes that Melbourne theatre has “gotten ever so samey”. Melbourne’s independent theatre would be a duller place without Reid and I’m not alone in my gladness that he is determined to produce original work.

With Sayraphim Lothian’s spot-on design and a cast of competitive alphas (Scott Gooding, Rachel Baring, Hayley Butcher, Joshua Cameron and writer Glyn Roberts), Reid guides the delightfully-dark script into a place where even the Christmas-cracker jokes would need a PGR rating.

There’s not much left in this future world beyond “fuck or punch”. It sets out to shock and this is where I think it just missed the mark. There were some moments where it could have gone somewhere very nasty and interesting, or somewhere even more outrageously, hilariously obscene – but I felt that the brakes were applied and what could have been jaw-dropping black was simply taken back to joke. They were good jokes, but didn’t have the expected effect.

It might have just been final night excitement, but the cast were enjoying the fun a little bit too much. The impact of having the crap beaten out of you is dulled if the actors make it clear that it’s meant to be funny. There’s no shock in “incest is the new gay” if it’s being said to create a nervous audience titter. The comic book style of performance was perfect for the script, but we needed to see more of the fascinating characters, rather than the terrific actors, because the telling of their story was lost. We were watching to see what the performers would do next, rather than what would happen next.

Reid declares that we shouldn’t “expect meaning from people paid to fake it”. It was clear that everyone involved in This is set in the future understood every nuance of meaning, but they could have shared their meaning just a little bit more with the audience.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com