Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman ever appointed to the supreme court of the United States, became the memefied face of a certain brand of American feminism during the presidency of Donald Trump. Beatified into a pop-culture symbol, the words and iconography of “the Notorious RBG” broke through the news-noise and resonated with many in the last years of her life. At the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, her likeness was almost as ubiquitous as the pink pussy hats that became a short-lived but popular accessory for the movement. But time moves quickly: Ginsburg, often a lone voice of dissent on that increasingly conservative court, died in 2020.
RBG: Of Many, One – a one-woman play written to honour her life – is a curious next step in Ginsburg’s legacy. The new work is by Suzie Miller, a lawyer-turned-playwright who also wrote Prima Facie, the 2018 play which excoriated the Australian legal system for its handling of sexual assault cases. That play was a hit, touring Australia before transferring to the West End with Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer in the leading role. (It will debut on Broadway next year.)
This play feels like another reach beyond Australian shores to touch the international; as a result, it occasionally feels like we’re the warm-up before the show reaches its intended audience overseas. Ginsburg’s struggle is like ours, but not ours; her work has not directly impacted our legal system. Still, Australian arts and culture, particularly in the mainstream, has a tendency to look overseas for icons, trends and subjects, and Miller is working within that continuum. Here, her play attempts to show us the humanity behind the liberal lion, as well as what it means to work at creating change across a lifetime.
On a mostly bare stage we meet Ginsburg, played here by the remarkable Heather Mitchell, an actor with a striking ability to connect with a room with only the twist of her mouth or a twinkle in the eye. Mitchell plays Ginsburg from the ages of 13 to 87, charting a life marked with loss (of her mother and sister), love (her great romance with husband Marty) and music (Ginsburg’s famed love of opera moves through Mitchell’s body like a revelation).
Mostly, though, there is law, and talk of law: its possibilities, its limitations and how it can be (but must not be) manipulated for political ends.
Miller’s swift-moving, sincere and occasionally frustrating script dips its toes into Ginsburg’s landmark cases, both those she argued as a lawyer and those she judged (the play could spend more time with these cases; you can’t help but want more law in a play about Ginsburg). It moves backwards and forwards through time with such sudden shifts that it’s difficult for the audience, and the production, to keep up. Actions and conversations are abandoned mid-thought in favour of flashbacks, which disrupts the emotional and dramatic build.
Director Priscilla Jackman works the script as best she can, keeping Mitchell supported on David Fleischer’s sparse set. Props serve as touchstones of time and place; the lighting (by Alexander Berlage) spends much of its time seeking her out for a supportive embrace, and composer and sound designer Paul Charlier mixes Wagner and Puccini with a touch of grandeur (and a little hip-hop) to build out Ginsburg’s inner worlds.
This is a play that cares. It’s thoughtful, warm and clear. But the script – and the production – has a habit of slipping into triteness. The eldest Ruth is witty; the younger versions less so. The script veers into cliche, which unfortunately means the production often does too: when Ginsburg discusses the Women’s March, the entire stage is bathed in pink and a pussy hat falls from the sky. In these moments, the play does Ginsburg, and her life’s work, a disservice.
That earnest simplicity is also a habit of Miller’s work, one that she mostly avoided in Prima Facie, her best play to date. What drove that play was its incandescence; a methodical, gutsy fury at the world and Australian law. However, while ideologically aligned with Miller’s best work, Ginsburg was temperamentally opposite, favouring clarity and precision, and separating politics from emotion. Indeed, Ginsburg’s one lapse into public emotion (speaking out about a potential Trump presidency) was a source of shame for her, not power.
Maybe Ginsburg was Miller’s desired subject, but she might have been the wrong vehicle for this play and for Miller’s clearest messages. While Ginsburg’s name and image is more recognisable, it was Mary Gaudron KC – the first woman to serve on Australia’s high court – who Miller notes in the play’s program was her inspiration while completing her own law degree.
Maybe our stages are a better fit to tell the story of our own “great dissenter”, Michael Kirby AC CMG; or those who have changed the fabric of Australian life and law, such as Kuku Yalanji woman Pat O’Shane, the country’s first female Aboriginal barrister and later magistrate. It’s difficult not to long for her story in this rare space, on one of Australia’s most famous stages, within one of Australia’s most famous theatre companies. But instead, we have a play about a beloved US figure that is courageously performed but strangely muted.
RBG: Of Many, One runs at Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 1 theatre until 17 December
