The misogynistic take on a real-life modern figure was disappointing and toeing the line on inappropriate, framing her as a schizophrenic, man obsessed, alcoholic and drug addict
The Madoff Ponzi scheme is one of the most infamous cases of financial fraud in modern history, bringing the Madoff family into the spotlight with the 2008 arrest of patriarch Bernie Madoff, for defrauding investors of $65 Billion through a phoney wealth management fund. The compelling complexities of this modern family drama would pique any author’s interest, and for Roger Steinmann, the matriarch Ruth is the inspiration for his fictional deep-dive into the secret life of a convicted felon’s wife. Filled with a mashup of disparate musings about the speculative life of this “lonely woman”, left in the lurch after the arrest of her husband and the untimely death of both sons, Ruthless ultimately becomes little more than a borderline offensive and sexist take on the modern single woman.
From the moment you walk in the theatre something seems askew, with almost-nonexistent house lights and an eerily quiet atmosphere, i.e. dead silence. The giant portraits of Bernard and his two sons stare down the audience, accompanied on stage by a lackluster set of mismatched furniture – a dining room table off to the side, a mirror precariously hung to the right, a period cabinet and garish white-wooden door – leaving audiences confused as to when and exactly where this play is taking place. Bernardo Hita’s lighting and sound design, while aiming to emulate a naturalistic environment, eventually ascending to an out of body psychosis, miss the mark with oddly mixed voiceovers and often distracting levels of generic disgruntled mob.
Now, performing an almost one-woman show is no easy feat, and Emily Swain’s take on Ruth is energetic and driven. But she’s also grotesque and borderline schizophrenic, veering between nonsensical musings on her attempts at being the perfect housewife yet not knowing her husband at all. The whole piece fractures even further with the arrival of caricature Italian pizza delivery boy Marco, played by Assistant Director Evan Emmanuel. The scene that plays out is unnervingly close to the precarious premise of an adult film, where an unsuspecting pizza delivery boy stumbles into the apartment of a distraught older woman. And it’s directed exactly that way. Ruth repeatedly and predatorily insists Marco join her for dinner, attempting to physically pull him into her prison of kitsch lace tablecloths and plastic wine glasses.
Overall, the direction by writer Steinmann is a mix of unbalanced absurdism with a dash of university sketch comedy, but in a completely un-ironic fashion. The entire play captures the vision of a weak and lonely woman whose only purpose in life was to be a mother and a wife, and now that she has lost “her men,” the only rational course of action is ending her life. As she holds a gun to her head in the second act, she begs the question, “where’s the dignity?,” yet the audience has been asking that question from the moment she stepped on the stage in a gaudy plastic blonde wig, dressed in a white shroud. The misogynistic take on a real-life modern figure was disappointing and toeing the line on inappropriate, framing her as a schizophrenic, man obsessed, alcoholic and drug addict.
With the jump from somewhat absurdist naturalism to drug-induced afterlife confrontation, the play exceeds the audience’s patience as they witness Ruth arguing with the voices of her two sons in heaven and her disgruntled “hubby” in hell. By the end of the play, the audience is left questioning if the moral of the story was truly as simple as “women are the root of all evil…” and poor Bernie Madoff was a victim of love, embezzling billions to try and please his high school sweetheart.