Review: Ruby Sunrise (Proud Kate Theater Project)

  
  
Ruby Sunrise 

Written by Rinne Groff  
Directed by Charlie McGrath 
at The Second Stage, 3408 N. Sheffield (map)
thru June 24  |  tickets: $20   |  more info
  
Check for half-price tickets  
  
  
   Read entire review
  

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What happens to a story over time when key elements are changed?

Proud Kate Theater Project presents

Ruby Sunrise

Review by J.H. Palmer

We first meet Ruby (Becky Blomgren) in the barn of her aunt Lois (Cindy Henkin) in Indiana. She talks to herself about the wonder of television and electrons, “television will change everything,” she says. She is discovered by Henry Hudnut (Dane Halvorson), a farmhand with college aspirations who rents a room from Lois. Ruby tells Henry and Lois that her father has recently passed, and since her mother died years earlier she has nowhere to go. She convinces Lois to let her stay for four months. Ruby never went to college, but grew up reading Popular Mechanics and other scientific publications, and is convinced that she can make the first television. She sets to work in the barn, creating a laboratory with items that Henry “borrows” from the lab at his college. Together they work on making cathode ray tubes and other gadgets necessary for television.

Where Henry is romantic – he waxes poetic on the beauty of fireflies, Ruby is scientific – she explains the principles of bioluminescence. He wins her over, but not easily, and as Act I progresses it becomes clear that Ruby isn’t telling the whole story; that many of the facts she relayed are in fact untrue. On top of this, Henry discovers a news item in the New York Times announcing the first television tests, and breaks the news to Ruby that she’s lost the race to make the first TV. Ruby dismisses the idea, insisting that hers will be better than the 2” x 3” screen mentioned in the NYT piece. She sets to work in her lab when an accident happens – an electrical short of some kind that sends her flying, leading to a quite shocking announcement. End of Act I.

The second act is set a few decades later in a TV studio in New York where TV writer Tad Rose (Shane Michael Murphy), is discussing ideas for shows with TV executive Martin Marcus (Travis Barnhart) and a script girl named Lulu (Claire Winkleblack). The talk is fast, the energy is high, and Tad is strapped for ideas until Lulu shares an idea with Tad that they work on together and pitch to Martin. The story is of Ruby, and with that we’ve jumped forward from the story that had begun in the barn in Indiana.

The script gets changed without Lulu’s permission, word choices get made to make the story more palatable to the censors, including casting a ditzy blonde named Suzy Tyrone (Kelly Amshoff) instead of the Liz Hunter (also played by Blomgren). Even though Hunter is a better casting choice, she’s been branded a communist.  Martin will take no chances in 1950’s America. Key points of the story are changed as well, and new revelations come to light.

Blomgren’s focus and passion are as electric as Ruby’s infatuation with science, and she shines in the title role. Cindy Henkin shows her chops in two roles: the embittered, alcoholic Lois, and the self-absorbed Ethel, with equal conviction. Dane Halverson plays the naïve Henry in Indiana, and the more callous Paul Benjamin, the actor who plays the role of “Henry,” in New York. Claire Winkleblack, Shane Michael Murphy, and Travis Barnhart inject the piece with the frenetic energy of early TV, and Kelly Amshoff’s performance is at times acrobatic.

Rating: ★★½

Ruby Sunrise continues through June 24th at The Second Stage, 3408 N. Sheffield (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 2:30pm.  Tickets are $20, and are available at the door or online through BrownPaperTickets.com (check for half-price tix at Goldstar.com). More info at RubySunrise.wordpress.com.  (Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes, includes intermission)

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