RBG: One Step at a Time
a Review by Ross Alan Bachelder
of www.artsaplenty.me
ATTENTION, lovers of live theatre, in and well beyond the Greater Portland region:
TONIGHT—Tuesday, June 6, 7:00 P.M—is your very last chance to see RBG: One Step at a time, a one-woman performance delivered entirely in the words of legendary Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself, brilliantly compiled and written by playwright, Footlights Theatre founder, and Executive Artistic Director Michael J. Tobin—and exquisitely performed by award-winning, Portland-based actor Jackie Oliveri.
This play tells the compelling story of Justice Ginburg’s unforgettable personal, professional, and legal journey through a long and storied life, using expertly chosen snippets and excerpts of essays, opinions, interviews, and letters (some from Ginsburg’s teenage years!) penned entirely by Ginsburg herself.
In the course of Oliveri’s flawless, unforgettable performance, we learn a great many poignant things about Bader, including her deep affection for her mother, Celia Bader; her incomparably beautiful relationship with her husband, Martin Ginsburg, who tirelessly championed and helped make possible her devotion to her groundbreaking work; and her inspiring 30-year friendship with conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and their frequently shared passions for fine food, quality wine, Grand Opera, and vigorous, always good-natured, diametrically opposed debates about the controversial issues of the day, including women’s rights, abortion, and gender discrimination—issues to which Ginsburg was passionately devoted for all of her years as a legal professional.
One way for theatre lovers to know, right away, that a performance they’re attending is going to be damn good from start to finish, is to ask themselves, “How quickly was I touched, not pleasantly and politely but deeply, by both the content and quality of this performance?”
For me the answer came, astonishingly, less than 30 seconds into the play. Aside went the proverbial curtain, up came the lights, and there, just two rows away from me and a packed house, sat Ms. Oliveri, an absolutely spot-on reincarnation of the Supreme Court Justice who has always been—and always will be—impossible not to love. To my quiet amazement, as the lights warmed, the tears assembled themselves and my heart was instantly invigorated in the way that only live theatre can manage to do it.
“This is RBG herself,” I marveled, “making a full-blown, life-affirming, there-in-the-flesh, posthumous appearance on the stage of one of my favorite theaters. No doubt about it: this time around, for the more-than-fair price of one little theatre ticket, I scored Big Time!”
On Opening Night, Oliveri delivered her lines—word-for-word, every one of them—from deep within the compassionate heart and formidable intellect of one of the most iconic figures ever to grace the inimitable Sturm und Drang of American political life. And she did it with the quiet assurance, consummate skill, and emotional authenticity of the genuine theatre professional we all love so much to see.
If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool political progressive like me, and if, like me, you hear the siren call of a truly meaningful stage experience and show up tonight—Tuesday, June 6—for a 7:00 p.m. performance of this play, you’ll leave Footlights thanking your lucky stars that you had the wisdom and good fortune to attend. GO, I beseech you, and experience live theatre at its highest imaginable level of excellence!
I want to end this review by praising Michael Tobin and Jackie Oliveri—lavishly—for their idealism, their creative gifts, and their steadfast commitment to live theatre as an art form.
Footlights Theatre, only minutes from downtown Portland, is at 190 US-1 in Falmouth, Maine. For tickets to RBG: ONE STEP AT A TIME—Final Performance TONIGHT—and for information about future Footlights performances and special events—go to www.thefootlightstheatre.com or call the Footlights Box Office, 24/7, at (207) 747-5434.