Review: RBG: Of Many, One is a portrait of pop feminism
Written by Suzie Miller, Directed by Priscilla Jackman
Review by Charlotte Smee
RBG: Of Many, One has many of the ingredients that could have made it great. It’s written by Suzie Miller, a lawyer who defected to the arts and became a playwright. It is a tribute to the late, “notorious” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second ever woman to sit on the US Supreme Court Bench who was known for her devotion to the law and to achieving equal justice for women. RBG is an idol that a 10 year old me would have loved, since I was the kind of kid who told everyone I’d be the first woman Prime Minister of Australia when I grew up.
Heather Mitchell, with her illustrious career in film, television and theatre, is a fantastic actress. She embodies Ginsburg at key moments in her legal career, as a hunched eighty year old judge, and as a young girl listening to her mother’s wisdom or experiencing opera for the first time with her feet swinging above the floor. The detail in Mitchell’s performance is what makes RBG fascinating to watch — she’s an expert, and a bit of an idol in her own right.
Direction by Priscilla Jackman turns what could have been a documentary-esque biography into something more theatrical. Design by David Fleischer gives a great sense of the gigantic institutions that are always sitting just behind Ginsburg — universities, law firms, courts. There were some questionable moments that cheapened the performance, and pushed it uncomfortably into pop feminism territory. These included a pink pussy hat dropping from the sky as Ginsburg praised the women who marched for equality from afar, and Ginsburg thanking stage hands in character when they gave her props, despite the monologue being otherwise written in a mostly naturalistic style. The oddest choice was blaring Azaelia Banks’ “212” underneath an impassioned speech — a rapper notorious for her multiple suspensions from (pre-Elon) Twitter for transphobic and racially charged tweets.
The problem with the dreams, and idols, that you have when you’re 10 years old is that they’re rooted in a narrow sense of individual achievement. I wanted to be the first woman(ish) to become Prime Minister because I thought that I’d look really smart, that I would be famous and it sounded good when I told people I wanted to be the best. I didn’t necessarily want to make the world better for other people. I didn’t understand the responsibility, the struggle, the sexism and the work that someone like Julia Gillard, or indeed RBG, would face when tasked with being a woman in a position of power. I also very much didn’t understand the kind of person you needed to be in order to get and stay in power.
Ginsburg had a lot of things going against her: she was Jewish, working class and a woman, and when she made it to Harvard she was sat down in a room with eight other women and asked why she’d dared to take a man’s seat at the table. So, she decided to be smart, to smile, to be strategic, and to be a lady. She was quiet, so she could bide her time and conform to the system she would later change. She said she enrolled to study law “so I could understand my husband’s job”. This is a pretty scathing indictment in itself, of the system, yes, but also of the self-effacement required of someone who wants to rise through the ranks of that system.
In comparison to Miller’s smash-hit work, Prima Facie, this vision of demure, intelligent, and quiet ‘pop’ feminism in RBG is frustrating. In Prima Facie, Tessa the criminal barrister also comes from a working class background. She loves the performance, the chase, the win - the law is great when you’re winning. Then, she is sexually assaulted by a colleague. She must use the law that she so adores to tell her story, and even with her skills she finds that it’s much harder from the other side of the bar. The work is fiery, angry, messy, and only sometimes preachy. It paints a bleak picture of the shortcomings of the legal system and its consistent failure to listen to women and survivors.
And yet, there was still something that incensed me to tears when I saw Prima Facie. Despite all the conforming and all the work of becoming a high-profile lawyer, and then having it all smashed to the ground, Tessa still has some belief in the system - in individual achievement on behalf of others. This comes to the forefront in RBG: it is a portrait of someone who never seems to acknowledge the work of those who came before, and those to come after, in the never ending fight for equality (other than her loving husband Marty). All that is paid to others is lip service in the title - Ginsburg is just one of many - but they are glaringly absent. There is no mention of RBG’s founding and leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union’s women’s rights project alongside Black lawyer and academic Pauli Murray - the same Pauli Murray who’s name appears next to Ginsburg’s on the brief for Reed v. Reed. Ditto for Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who filed Roe v. Wade in 1973. These are just two of the many, and you can find a few more in the opening chapters of this book by Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida. Still more Australians are mentioned in Cassie Tongue’s review of RBG.
This portrait of RBG rewards those who train themselves to speak and act in the right way, despite their instincts to speak out angrily, messily, loudly. It quietly rejects those who cannot say things quietly, those who cannot act correctly, those who cannot look like those in power, by showing them that we must distribute power to the privileged women who can do it for them.
How long must we bide our time before people listen to us? How many more women, working class people, or other minorities need to make it to the Supreme Court (the High Court, or Parliament) to fundamentally change the way the law sees them? And how long can it really last in a world where the many years Ginsburg spent being quiet are erased in a second, with one reversal of Roe v. Wade?
In the play, Ginsburg says: “I believe in listening to those I disagree with, and finding common ground to build on - inching us all closer to equality”. This is an admirable position. But the issue with pop feminism, and this position, is that it “keeps trying to hand you a map to navigate the obstacles of patriarchy instead of trying to dismantle them.” How can we listen to those who refuse to listen to us, and force us to jump through countless hoops to be able to talk to them? How can we listen to those who only want us quiet, or worse, dead?
The only way we can make sustainable change is loudly, and together. It is a missed opportunity to paint this portrait of RBG in a one woman show - and a missed opportunity not to have put her in context with the angry activists that worked before and alongside her, not to show her support of other women in the law, and not to show the many many hands it takes to attack the problem from many angles. Of many, she is one, but without the many, she becomes an untouchable icon that ends up serving the system she worked so hard towards changing.
RBG: Of Many, One plays at the Wharf 1 Theatre for a sold-out, extended season until 23 December. Find information here.
Images by Prudence Upton
Charlotte is the editor of Kaleidoscope Arts Journal, a little enby and a big mess. Their friends regularly worry that they might overdose on theatre.
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