Ruination Review: Rejuvenating Inspiration

Lately I’ve been feeling without inspiration and without motivation to pursue my own creative endeavours. I’ve had writers block in my songwriting and have felt unsure about what topics to delve into in my writing. This was until yesterday, when I got invited to go see the ballet at the Royal Opera House (ROH). I was unsure about whether to go, partially out of feeling sorry for myself that I’d been wallowing in my uninspired pit at home and partially as I was afraid I’d feel too tired to watch something in central London so late and travel home. But I convinced myself that I’ll need to experience new things to feel rejuvenated and reminded myself that it’s very easy to get comfortable in the Winter blues at home. So, throughout Ruination, I felt obliged to search for hidden meaning, scout for subtextual ideas and to interpret the potential meta-narrative connotations of repeated references to The Nutcracker. My analytical mind looking for something to feed its ego and say that I “understood” this play. But I soon gave up and realised that what I was witnessing was a breathtaking piece of physical theatre that continued to floor me with every movement, sound, sight and idea that it threw at me. For the first time in a long time, I revelled in the story, removed myself from feeling the need to analyse, and allowed myself to be swept up in the magnificent performance.

Running at the ROH’s Linbury Theatre, Ruination is Ben Duke’s modern interpretation of the Greek myth of Medea and Jason, exploring their tragic relationship of betrayal, death and love through a bizarre and wacky courtroom affair. I’m reluctant to reveal too much as I’m beginning to realise that the less you know as a spectator of media, the better the experience is. Two other experiences this year - watching Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Heathers: The Musical, both of which I knew nothing about – have shown me that surprise doesn’t mean your opinion is arbitrarily skewed by some “new” sensation, but that your expectation can be determined by the power of the performance, and not by the deterministic opinions and context you will have inevitably heard before. Given my desire to urge people to see this show without prescience, the irony that I am writing this review is not lost on me. But I felt so inspired, so compelled to write this because I knew I couldn’t live with the idea that I might not. I knew nothing of the tale of Medea, nor about what Ruination even was – I thought I was going to see the ballet! And I’m so glad I didn’t because I was able to evade looming inevitabilities of the plot and ignore the guessing game of who’s who and what’s what.

Very rarely can any piece of media manage to balance comedy, sorrow, joy, tragedy and horror without devolving into uncanny irony or reducing itself to a meek attempt to portray any of these emotions. But Ruination finds that focal point of balance and never falters. In the comedic timing and deliver of Hades; the beautifully sorrowful vocals of Keith Pun; the existentially ambered ambience of the door into the afterlife; the masked dancing that is constantly recontextualised from joy to horror through a shift from jazz to the macabre, Ruination hits each note perfectly to evoke the emotion it wants. It doesn’t ask you to feel afraid, to feel sad, or to feel love – it takes these things from you, and at no point lets up. It seems Ruination has made me truly aware of the metaphorical dividing line of London’s performance scene, sparking a need to get away from the mainstream theatre lineup. This review should be seen as a plea to move away from West end hits, and to look below, around and above these theatres in search of performance that offers creativity, depth, meaning and emotion in a way that the mainstream cannot. Ruination will provide all of these without compromise and amounts to what has been one of the most inspiring and evocative experiences I’ve had all year.

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If you act now, you can still grab tickets to Ruination’s last few shows of the year. I can only hope you feel as rejuvenated and inspired as I have, but I can guarantee that you will not be disappointed.