Heather Mitchell as Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Photo: Prudence Upton
In a nutshell, one of the best pieces of theatre I have ever seen in Sydney. Or anywhere. An extraordinary woman, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, extraordinarily well portrayed in a ninety-minute tour de force by actor Heather Mitchell, and written by the extraordinarily talented Suzie Miller (Prima Facie, and much more). And let’s not forget the exemplary direction by Priscilla Jackman.
From the minute the lights go up, the audience feels they are in the presence of RBG. And she’s anxious. At nearly 60 years old, she’s standing by the phone, willing it to ring as nervous as a 16-year-old waiting to hear from a new boyfriend. But the voice she wants to hear is that of President Clinton, telling her he has appointed her to the Supreme Court of the USA. And as she waits, Mitchell, channelling RBG so completely that the two women seem to merge, recalls her teenage years; her love for the mother who advised her so well; the prejudice she encountered having been her accepted into Harvard Law School (her being a girl and all); her struggle to get a job (so what that she topped her year? She was a woman, and married, and Jewish); and she introduces us to the love of her life – Marty Ginsberg – who she met while they were both at Cornell and who would be her husband for 59 years.
Miller, a lawyer herself, has pored over the personal life and career of RBG with forensic detail and distilled the essence of her life and work into a play that gives us an insight into the woman. A woman to whom family was key, who would fight tooth and nail to achieve justice and equality for all, and a woman who could be transported by opera. Watching Mitchell be a teenaged RBG listening to her first opera was magical in itself. The emotions conjured were almost palpable, spell-binding. Puccini would have been proud.
Miller’s script highlights three of the many important periods in RBG’s time as a justice while, at the same time, weaving in humour, anecdotes and the losses and highlights of her personal life.
A timeline at the back of an otherwise relatively dark and bare stage (David Fleischer allows a chair here and there, a phone, some legal robes) tells us where and when we are. Alex Berlage’s lighting is sharp and dramatic, spare with washes of soft colour when the mood is lighter.
First is RBG’s meeting with Clinton and subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court, backgrounded by brief summaries of the pivotal cases in her career to this point, when she established herself – against the odds – as a justice who would fight for gender equality.
Next, Miller has imagined a lunch meeting between RBG and President Obama, which turns into a verbal fencing match. Obama is in his sixth year as president and looking to the future; RBG’s health (she has had more than one battle with cancer) worries him. It is unspoken, but Ginsberg knows he wants her to resign to make way for a younger candidate, sympathetic to Democrat ideologies. She will not let go of her principles: the judiciary must operate independently of the government and appointments to the Supreme Court are for life. Besides, she knows Hillary Clinton will run for the presidency and wants to be in office when the first female president is elected.
Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we could groan.
So to the Trump years. Horrified at the thought of such a man in the White House, RGB forgets her own rules and publicly criticises Trump. (And gives us a fine impersonation of the man into the bargain.) She regrets it. There is media backlash. Miller’s script does not ask whether Ginsburg regretted her decision to hold on to her position in the Supreme Court but she gives voice to the misstep in speaking out against Trump. Even the great make mistakes; RGB owned this one.
And now we are close to the end. And what a finale it is as Mitchell/RGB bows out of life and keeps us with her to her last breath. I am not often moved to tears but RBG got me. Mitchell’s performance is superb.
Everyone should see this play. At least once.
The Sydney Theatre Company’s RBG is at Wharf 1, until 23 December.
Tickets: $57-$104, ($30, standing)
www.sydneytheatre.com
