 |  |  |  |  |
Opined November 17, 2005
The Ruby Sunrise by Rinne Groff, Directed by Oskar Eustis
With Marin Ireland (Ruby/Elizabeth Hunter), Patch Darragh (Henry/Paul Benjamin), Anne Scurria (Lois/Ethel Reed),
Richard Masur (Martin Marcus), Jason Butler Harner (Tad Rose), Maggie Siff (Lulu) and Audra Blaser (Suzie Tyrone); with
Ron Brice, Eric Martin Brown, Christine Digiallonardo, Vaneik Echeverria, Jocelyn Greene, Peter McCain, Chad Smith,
and Eric Thorne.
Set Design: Eugene Lee, Costume Design: Deborah Newhall, Lighting Design: Deb Sullivan
Public Theater/Martinson, 420 Lafayette St, Closes December 4th
The best part of this show is the set and what it allows the actors to invent. Actually, “set” seems to be too small a word. This is
nearly a throwback to Environmental Theatre, where a space was filled with platforms, stairs, ramps etc. and the production could
take place anywhere. I went to school at the University of Connecticut where we were blessed with a resident designer, Gerry Rojo,
who took a black box studio and turned it into “The Mobius Theatre.” As the name suggests, it had no beginning or ending, no
defined playing or observing spaces. It was an exciting space for both the audience and the performers.
In this production Eugene Lee has taken the stage and turned it into a television studio. What is a little confusing, however, is that we
don’t know that until the second half of the first act when we are catapulted from a farm on the plains in 1927 to a television studio in
New York in 1952. We never make it back to the farm and there is no revelation as to why we started there.
This is a fictionalized version of the story of the beginning of television: how the ideas for transmitting an image started to sprout up
like winter wheat and how it began as an idealistic venture. How could anyone allow war to go on, the characters say, if they can see
it in their own homes? This is an astonishing story, and one that would make an excellent lecture or documentary, or, say a movie
about Edward R. Murrow. But without a clear protagonist the thread of this story gets lost in exposition, which weakens the
production’s staying power.
1927: out on a farm in central America, Ruby, along with others of her time, figures out how television would work by watching
people plow fields. Too complicated by half, but it has something to do with the back and forth travel of waves to make a visible
pattern, hence a picture. For reasons we don’t get until the very end of the play, Ruby does not succeed in her quest.
1952: at the studio in New York we meet a writer new to television who is soon given the task of writing the story we saw earlier in
the first act. Enter his own Gal Friday, who is smarter than most, related to the characters out on the plains, and still brings everyone
coffee. She and the writer work on the story together until she finds out that the woman she wants for the main character has been
blacklisted.
All the actors tackle this material with enthusiasm and skill. Including the actors who play stagehands and change the set. By the end
of the show the combination of the set and the actors acumen really does give us the feeling that we are in an old TV studio watching
a “live” broadcast of a show like Westinghouse Studio One or Kraft Television Theatre. (Sponsored shows in the 1950’s - oh my!)
There is a sort of melding that happens as we watch the broadcast being shown on a screen in black and white, jus the way some of
us remember it. The lines of present and past get blurred and the audience finds itself suspended in between. If the beginning of this
show were as strong as the ending it would have swept me off my seat.
This is the first production directed by the new Artistic Director at the Public, Oskar Eustis, who hails from Rhode Island, as does the
set designer. (Paula Vogel is entrenched there as well.) Providence invades the big apple.
At the Talk Back following the show, one audience member said that the author might be accused of trying to do to much, to which
Mr. Eustis responded “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem to have?” Well, it’s not a BAD problem, but it’s not the best. This play
has had a long track record – commissioned my Playwrights Horizons, produced at Trinity Rep and the Actor’s Theater of Louisville.
With all that work, they still let the story break out in a rash of plot points that leaves us more tired than inspired.
PS – the staff shirts have been changed from black to ORANGE in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Public. Since when did
Orange become a symbol for 50? None of the staff like this color. Comments range from “Yeah, it’s different,” to “It’s not MY
shirt.” Someone should tell whoever had this idea that that nothing rhymes with orange and not a lot looks good in it.
©2005 Tulis McCall