Friday Night with Ruby
Ruby's Last Dollar at the Opera House: My favourite line and the current kitchen blackboard thought for the day: "wherever you go, well, there you are". It brings to mind my family's favourite filler lines: "well, there you go" and "well, here we are" uttered in frequent conversation gaps over the years, mainly in chinese restaurants in rural and regional centres across New South Wales, and occasionally in Victoria. I'm thinking specifically of the Echuca/Moama roadtrip there.
The story is a sad, poignant one - Ruby's Last Dollar, not our Echuca/Moama roadtrip - about a starry-eyed orphan who comes from nothing to the pinnacle of Tivoli diva in the 50s (I guess). Later when she's RSL Ruby, pleading not be removed from her stool at the Dancing Girl machine, she's mutton dressed as lamb, and that's the point. She's clinging to the memory of herself as she was in her wide-eyed prime, to the idea of the Rubiest Ruby - one with more possibilities than responsibilities.
The second half mostly works because it doesn't shy away from the pathos of her position. The first half is peppered by slapstick reminiscent of university Theatre/Media productions, and I just don't know why it's necessary, except that the seniors in the row in front were in stitches. Perhaps I've grown unaware of the increasingly limited radius of the track I tread across this city from day to day but Reg Cribb's idea of Sydney, not just in the past (for which we might more easily forgive him) but right now, is of extreme cause and even more extreme effect. In my my mind even Sydney has more subtlety than that.
Still, despite the fact that she doesn't at any stage appear in the gold lurex pants she wears in the marketing shot, Jacki Weaver, her apple cheeks and (as LT rightly commented) her decolletage are national treasures.
The story is a sad, poignant one - Ruby's Last Dollar, not our Echuca/Moama roadtrip - about a starry-eyed orphan who comes from nothing to the pinnacle of Tivoli diva in the 50s (I guess). Later when she's RSL Ruby, pleading not be removed from her stool at the Dancing Girl machine, she's mutton dressed as lamb, and that's the point. She's clinging to the memory of herself as she was in her wide-eyed prime, to the idea of the Rubiest Ruby - one with more possibilities than responsibilities.
The second half mostly works because it doesn't shy away from the pathos of her position. The first half is peppered by slapstick reminiscent of university Theatre/Media productions, and I just don't know why it's necessary, except that the seniors in the row in front were in stitches. Perhaps I've grown unaware of the increasingly limited radius of the track I tread across this city from day to day but Reg Cribb's idea of Sydney, not just in the past (for which we might more easily forgive him) but right now, is of extreme cause and even more extreme effect. In my my mind even Sydney has more subtlety than that.
Still, despite the fact that she doesn't at any stage appear in the gold lurex pants she wears in the marketing shot, Jacki Weaver, her apple cheeks and (as LT rightly commented) her decolletage are national treasures.
posted by noonie at 1:37 PM
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