Theatre review: RBG: Of Many, One
The dynamic trio of playwright Suzie Miller, director Priscilla Jackman and actor Heather Mitchell finally hits Adelaide with RBG: Of Many, One – an ode to one of history’s most defining women.
As the second woman to be appointed to the US Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg served from 1993 until her death in 2020 at the age of 87, living out her own advice: “Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived”.
In the opening scene of RBG: Of Many, One, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is waiting not-so-patiently for President Bill Clinton to ring and tell her whether or not she’s got the job as the newest of nine on the Supreme Court bench. He takes his time because there’s a Chicago Bulls game on the tele and that’s his team, so he’s glued to the screen. While she waits, she recalls: how she was born into a family of grief, but her mother was pure lightning and spurred her on; how she discovered opera and cried to Puccini, the composer who taught her about love and human vulnerability, preparing her for her future husband of more than half a century, Marty. ‘I want to sing opera!’ she says. ‘I want to use my voice!’ And so she does.
Bader Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School in the mid-1950s, a mother of a 14-month-old baby. As swiftly as we flashbacked to her childhood, we flashforward through her career, and it’s a doozy. Win after major win for gender equality and women’s rights ensues, but what comes across so poignantly in the first third of the incredibly assured Sydney Theatre Company-commissioned play is, surprisingly, the deep and enduring love between Ruth and Marty, which feels immediately nostalgic and always erstwhile, since it’s public knowledge that he died before she did, and she mourned his death throughout the final years of her life.
This is a compassionate play as much as it’s a biographical one of guts and gumption, and of legacy and ego. One minute the person to my right is smiling with great pride, and the next the person to my left is taking off their glasses to wipe their eyes. Bader Ginsburg’s fight for legal justice deserves as much, but she’s only human, and this play explores a major misstep near the end of her career, which has led America to where it is today, essentially dissembling women’s reproductive rights and their equal opportunity in the workplace – the very rights Bader Ginsburg fought to secure for the entirety of her professional life.
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Originally performed at Sydney’s Wharf 1 in 2022, and playing to over 100,000 audiences around Australia, the Dunstan Playhouse performance of RBG: Of Many, One is an encore, with the indefatigable Logie and AACTA award-winning Heather Mitchell continuing to nail the role as Bader Ginsburg. Mitchell (The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Fake) is animated and emotional, perfectly tuned. Whether seated in the only piece of furniture on stage or walking in front of the geometrical set of linked white columns, she gives a defining performance, which just might be everything Olivier award-winning playwright Suzie Miller had hoped it would be. Following the extraordinary success of Prima Facie, Miller is hot, and, incidentally, a former lawyer who worked at a community legal centre, assisting women in sexual assault cases while she was on maternity leave. Perhaps such a play about such a woman could only be written by Miller? It does come across as intrinsically personal, no matter how powerfully collective it sets out to be.
Director Priscilla Jackman (The Cost of Living) casts her vision wide in ensuring the one-woman show can move through place, time and even character (RBG occasionally takes on the personas of the current and former presidents when recalling conversations). What could be tricky business is sorted by Alexander Berlage, whose lighting signals when and where we are.
As she says to the audience, Bader Ginsburg believes in hoping and working, which really does sum up so much of her life, but the play doesn’t fully reside in that positive energy. If it had, RBG: Of Many, One would have played off the pop cultural trope of ‘The Notorious RGB’ and been a fun show, really great. But infusing it with a tragedy that speaks to today’s dramatically troubled state of the world makes it a richer one, and truly outstanding.
RBG: Of Many, One is playing at the Dunstan Playhouse until May 2.
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