Ruby Moon - Matt Cameron

Right! So, I read Ruby Moon by Matt Cameron. How do I begin a blog about a play that I’m not entirely sure what to believe or think? I do know the play was about  a young girl named Ruby Moon going missing from her family home. Her mother Sylvie Moon and her father Ray Moon, are tormented by their daughters disappearance. Sounds simple enough right? Well that’s where you’re wrong! This narrative is far more sinister and dark than it seems. Matt Cameron creates a dark and mysterious suburban world, which leaves you questioning, what are the neighbours really up to? How much do you know about the couple up the street?

Ruby Moon has two male and female characters, and they each play four characters each. From the get go, it seems that the mother Sylvie is going crazy with the grief over her missing child. The story unfolds with each actor playing each neighbour in the street talking and explaining about the day Ruby was taken. Each character is outrageously strange, and all have their own different stories of the day. After each encounter with the strange neighbouring characters, we’re taken back to the Moon’s home, and their still piecing the story of their missing little girl together. Until finally at the end, the story comes together, but you still don’t know if Ruby is real, or if she was who was at fault, or is this just a strange crazy couple who do this for fun?

Matt Cameron sets his scenes so amazingly well throughout the play. Just to begin the play, he sets the scene by writing “A timeless, placeless world…a room evoking dust covered memory…There is also a street lamp and the bare branches of blackened trees pointing like gnarled fingers through a vivid night sky. A full moon hovers.” I love this kind of description throughout, it sets an amazing and eerie atmosphere to a recognisable environment of the home. He incorporates sounds to emphasise the emptiness of the stage. I really enjoyed how he created the separate characters of the neighbours although keeping characteristics of Sylvie and Ray though them, which gave the feeling that were these people real? Or were they characters in the minds of Sylvie and Ray? The creepy doll pieces that were being sent to the parents, was a interesting narrative development, it was like someone else was involved, and they’re putting together their story.

I really enjoyed reading Ruby Moon. Although I still don’t know if it was the parents, or the ice cream man or it was just a crazy sick weird story in the minds of crazy people. I still really enjoyed it. I know that I won’t see a picture perfect street as just quaint any more, I think I’ll always question what’s going on behind closed doors. Julia!

 

STC Production