Directed by Priscilla Jackman, RBG is structured around Ginsburg’s interactions with three presidents that were defining moments in her career: her interview with Bill Clinton that led to her nomination for the Supreme Court in 1993; Barack Obama’s attempt to have Ginsburg resign to pave the way for another liberal justice; and her public censure of the presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Heather Mitchell, in a bravura performance, portrays Ginsburg not just over this nearly thirty-year period, but from the ages of thirteen to eighty-seven. It is remarkable to see Mitchell go from the ungainly movements of a teenager to the stooped shuffle of an elderly woman.

Mitchell’s performance carries the weight of the entire show. Her resemblance to Ginsburg is uncanny, and you could almost believe that Mitchell is the true embodiment of Ginsburg’s inner world. But the problem of writing a one-woman show about someone as sphinx-like as Ginsburg, well known though she was, is that any representation will be a projection of what the writer, and audience, hope Ginsburg to be. To be sure, this is true of any historical figure portrayed in a play. It is an issue of dramatic epistemology: because we can never truly know what the character/icon is thinking or feeling, we fill any lacunae with our own desires.

Who, or what, then, do we need Ginsburg – or ‘the Notorious R.B.G.’ as she is affectionately known on the internet – to be? Something akin to a feminist saint, an almost unflawed paragon of virtue who won battles for gender equality, and dissented from the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of civil rights laws, without needing to resort to overt expressions of fury. At one point in the play, Ginsburg tells the audience her strategy: ‘Be smart, smile. Be strategic. Be a lady.’ No angry feminists here.

I was struck by this vision of feminism – so white and polite – and in many ways a rejection of the sorts of loud, angry activism of the #MeToo movement and the women’s liberation movement. The play seems to be implying that women, and people of minority groups, will only get the equality they deserve if they are on their best behaviour – exemplary as Ginsburg. Ginsburg in RBG is angry, but it is the kind of demure and controlled anger that is more akin to disappointment. The only time in the play when Ginsburg loses her cool is in her criticism of Trump, thereby undermining the separation of executive and judicial powers by trying to influence a presidential election. Even then, the audience presumably agrees with her assessment of Trump’s character.

Heather Mitchell as Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Prudence Upton)

There is something of the mise en abyme about the play’s form as a monodrama, Mitchell’s performance, and the hagiographical treatment of Ginsburg. RBG features a single character and is performed by a single person, obscuring the complexity of both the collaborative nature of theatre-making and collective movements. Even the play’s title collapses singularity and multiplicity: Ginsburg is both an exemplary and the everywoman.

Ginsburg, in the culture at large, is a synecdoche for the American feminist movement’s hard-won legal advancements. There is no doubt that Ginsburg was an extraordinary woman, let alone human being, but the play paints her achievements as though they were not joint efforts. The script’s focus on Ginsburg’s emotional and domestic worlds obscures the fact that Ginsburg may have been representing causes in court, but she did not do all the work alone. This is partly to do with the play’s form: it is monologue, after all. It is difficult to represent the teams, colleagues, and activists whose work led to the realisation of legal successes when there is only one character on stage.

While the script doesn’t attend to the small army of legal and activist professionals who worked alongside Ginsburg in the fight to end gender discrimination, RBG is a tender representation of those who loved and were loved by Ginsburg. RBG is both a legal drama and a love story. The audience learns about Ginsburg’s husband and primary supporter, Marty, who facilitated Ginsburg’s career by taking on a larger share of domestic labour than was the norm for twentieth-century marriages. The play tenderly dramatises the decades-long love and deep respect the coupled shared, and the scenes detailing their mutual sacrifices and care in the face of loss are moving.

RBG: Of Many, One is an elegant, feeling play. Designer David Fleischer creates a relatively unadorned stage. A few choice costume changes represent different historical events and the process of ageing. The script is sharp, and Mitchell’s performance is engrossing. We learn about Ginsburg’s passion for opera, which at significant moments in the play, is used to interesting (and emotive) effect by composer and sound designer Paul Charlier.

I do wonder, however, who this production is for. Some members of the audience were visibly moved – and Ginsburg’s life is indeed moving. But we are not in America; Ginsburg is not an Australian icon. Her battles are not necessarily ours. Australia has, is having, its own fight for women’s liberation. Surely there is a complex, difficult, unsaintly, Australian feminist icon out there deserving of her own dramatic treatment?

RBG: Of Many, One (Sydney Theatre Company) continues at the Wharf 1 Theatre until 17 December 2022. Performance attended: 5 November.