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The Ruby Sunrise
Chicago Sun Times
July 22, 2009
BY HEDY WEISS
To start, a bit of musing on a curious case of theatrical overlap. "The Ruby Sunrise," now in a vibrant Chicago premiere by the Gift Theatre, is Rinne Groff's rueful, multifaceted play about the invention of television and its early breakthrough years in the 1950s -- a work first produced at two regional theaters and then brought to the stage of New York's Public Theatre in 2005. Two years later, Aaron Sorkin's "The Farnsworth Invention" -- a drama on nearly identical themes -- arrived on Broadway.
Sorkin is the creator of "The West Wing," the widely heralded NBC series. Groff is a respected but far less famous writer, with many Off-Broadway and regional productions to her credit. Guess who got the big buzz? And watching Groff's play earlier this week, I kept thinking that while these two works might differ somewhat in terms of voice and perspective, they are remarkably similar in many ways. So is it simply a case of two smart artists becoming simultaneously fascinated with the history of TV at the very moment network TV has been suffering a precipitous loss of audiences and prestige? Or is something else afoot here?
In any case, Chicago audiences will be able to compare Groff's sophisticated drama, with its feminine twist and "Wizard of Oz"-like undertones, to Sorkin's zestily macho work when TimeLine Theatre presents "The Farnsworth Invention" next spring. Both plays begin on the American prairie in the 1920s, with their respective hayseed geniuses far from the commercial power center of New York. In Sorkin's case, the homegrown genius is Philo Farnsworth of Utah, a historical figure. For Groff it's Ruby (given a deep, quietly transcendent portrayal by Maura Kidwell), an Indiana girl who flees the abuse of her mentor-father, takes cold refuge in the boarding house of her bitter, hard-drinking Aunt Lois (a wonderfully starchy Alexandra Main) and receives both assistance and romantic distraction by way of a student and fellow boarder, Henry (Patrick De Nicola).
Ruby's faith in herself falters when she learns that Vladimir Zworkin and others have beaten her to the patent office and the media. But her fate is in question until the play's action moves to New York in 1952. There, Lulu (the electric Brenda Barrie, most recently a star of "Graceland" at Profiles Theatre) -- a production assistant in the heyday of live television and a young woman possessed of an uncanny feel for the medium -- romances writer Tad Rose (Michael Patrick Thornton, first rate as a gifted, broken-spirited writer) and trusts him with her mother's story. That mother, of course, was Ruby.
The play's generational "leap" is deftly bridged as Groff assigns many of the actors from the Iowa scenes to neatly corresponding roles in the 1950s live TV production of Ruby's story. Joining the lineup is Caitlin Emmons as Suzie Tyrone, the dumb blond who is cast as Ruby rather than the more gifted and appropriate (but blacklisted) Elizabeth Hunter (superbly evoked by Kidwell). Director John Gawlik covers up some clunky set changes with amusing distractions by way of vintage commercials and bowling footage. And he makes sure the sad broken promise of TV as "the great democratizer and peace-bringer" is transmitted with perfect clarity.
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