Ruby Moon by Matt Cameron

Ruby Moon by Matt Cameron

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Posted 2014-11-14 by Nadine Cresswell-Myattfollow

Thu 13 Nov 2014 - Sat 22 Nov 2014



This version of Matt Cameron's contemporary classic Ruby Moon offers a strange and unexpected night out at the theatre.

It defies expectations. The play was once described as a "gothic-comic-tragic-psycho-drama" and you could probably add the words pastiche, black comedy, murder mystery and the phrase "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" that flew into my companion's mind unbidden.

I am not sure, that in giving you the basic plot, I am not offering a disservice as nothing is as it seems in this play.

On the surface, Ruby Moon, is about a young couple Ray and Sylvie, whose daughter Ruby in her red dress has gone missing on the way to visit her grandmother.

If you have already picked up shades of Little Red Red Hiding Hood and fractured fairy stories, you would be right. But that is just one thread and there is much to unravel.

The couple are demented, continuing to rake over all the clues as well as question the possible motives of their bizarre medley of eccentric neighbours none of whom they now trust. Surely if your child goes missing it must be someone in your street right?



Nighttimes are the worst when the bereft couple rant and pace, trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle and the body bits of a dismembered doll that keep arriving on their doorstep.

So a second thread becomes the detective story and this keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. At times the script seems a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (a novel that also became a play) in that it is a suburban drama where neighbours become suspects and the narrator is quite odd but at other times it is reminiscent of the recent psychological thriller movie Gone Girl where nothing is quite as it seems.

Armed with seemingly new clues the couple have dredged from their constant ruminations the husband and wife individually visit their bizarre neighbours.



Although the set changes very little when they do enter these other homes. Another clue perhaps? Or is the point perhaps that in suburbia the loungeroom becomes a generic space where families are both contained and isolated from the rest of the world. Even more tufts and threads to unravel.

These neighbours include a little old Christian zealot who is obsessed with her parrot, a depressed clown, a soldier under the thumb of his dominating mother (shades of Hitchcock's Psycho here), a vamp who loves to undress for the men in the neighbourhood by never closing her curtains, a half-mad babysitter and a completely mad scientist.

In fact all the characters are various shades and permutations of what we might consider "mad."

At first it seemed a little strange that director Blake Barnard had not chosen an older actress to play the little old Christian zealot living next door but gradually even this made sense.

All the neighbours are played brilliantly played by only two young extremely talented actors, Doug Lyons and Eliza Wood. What a repertoire of characters and performances they have in their stash. Totally convincing and imminently watchable and each of their characterizations is brilliant.

This play is sometimes studied as a VCE text and as Matt Cameron wrote in the Introduction "The chameleonic properties of the actor, transforming before our very eyes: for me it is the essence of theatre magic."

These actors certainly sprinkle around such magic.

The bereft couple are played by Isabella Claassen and Samuel Moore who both offer the audience stirling performances. They must move from cool and detached to delusional and dysfunctional and they manage their range with aplomb.

Like one of, Baker's Dozen's previous theatre productions Mindgame , this play delves into questions of sanity and insanity, reality and bizarre fictions and the underlying weirdness of life that increasingly dominates our popular culture.

Dark topics perhaps but all done with a light touch and enough comic-relief to avoid moroseness.

The special and dramatic sound and lighting effects are also worth considering in this play, as they add to the weirdness and provide essential clues in their own right.



It is also an experience visiting the arts space at Revolt Productions in Kensington.

It is an 1800's building that was once an old factory but is now an arts hub.

To others perhaps it is well-known, but coming from the other side of town it was refreshingly different. It has lots of large spaces, huge innovative internal sculptures and even a bar. Apparently it is also open during the day as a cafe.

If you get a chance to see this production, even if it means trekking across town, I believe you will find this a stimulating, engrossing and thought-provoking play that you will be unravelling all the way home and beyond.



#bars
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!date 13/11/2014 -- 22/11/2014
%wnmelbourne
133910 - 2023-06-13 10:14:07

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