Staged in the sometimes noisy Front Room in St. Andrew Square, Becoming Doctor Ruth transports its audience into the New York apartment of Dr Ruth Westheimer, packed up as she prepares to move out. As each box is filled, we’re pulled into a memory triggered by the object inside, the pace kept lively by regular phone interruptions from removal men, family, and her assistant.
What unfolds is a remarkable life story: a ten-year-old German Jewish girl sent alone to Switzerland by train in 1938, followed by time spent living all over the world before she eventually settled in New York. These early chapters, a child navigating war alone and later a young woman finding her feet in unfamiliar countries and early relationships, are told with real warmth and heartbreak in equal measure.
The show’s most affecting stretch covers her third marriage, the love of her life, with both the joy of that relationship and the grief of losing him coming through vividly, before the tone shifts into the sharp, often very funny material from her years as a radio sex therapist.
Anne O’Sullivan carries the entire hour alone, I was completely unaware that the accent was not her own prior to the show, and was absolutely shocked to find out it was just acting. Her performance is so complete that it stops feeling like a performance at all; more than once it was easy to forget you were watching an actor rather than Dr Ruth herself. This is a moving, meticulously crafted tribute that is well worth seeing.
Becoming Dr. Ruth, 16:55, Front Room at Assembly @ St Andrew Square,Until Aug 30
