Kathleen Ruddy is returning to Edinburgh Fringe after spending some time as a television producer. Her previous work at Fringe has won the BT Award for Comedy and a Fringe First, alongside receiving more than fifty-five-star reviews.
Now she is back with The Cut of Her Jib.
“A wicked, gin-soaked dark comedy set on a stormy Edinburgh Hogmanay. Belinda Crabbs’ husband disappears, leaving behind police tape and three decades of marital fatigue. Enter Barbara, the cleaner with forensic instincts and impeccable timing. What follows is a razor-sharp dismantling of marriage, class and sex. Delivered with biting one-liners and delicious cruelty. Female rage detonates. Widowhood, it turns out, can be an upgrade and menopause absolute murder. From the multi-award-winning writer of Sex, Chips & Ouzo, Glasgow Hard Tickets, Death of a Playboy, and The Devil Wears Primark. “
Where: Lower Theatre at theSpace @ Niddry St, Stephenson Theatre at theSpace
When: 7-22 Aug
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-cut-of-her-jib
What can you tell us about your show?
Set during one stormy Edinburgh night, the play brings together a wife, a possible mistress and a cleaner, armed with little more than a bottle of gin and thirty years of resentment. What follows is a darkly cathartic exploration of female rage, reinvention and survival.
What is it about and where did the idea come from?
The idea came from being surrounded by raging women. I think we’re all on fire at the moment, and I don’t just mean hormonally – I mean it seemed we were ignited by #MeToo, and now we’re kicking off and kicking ass. There’s a general feeling that men should just step the hell down, and movement is reinforced when women go through menopause – it’s not a curse, it’s a blessing to finally see the world without our oestrogen-tinted glasses. I’ve done that comedically. We’re not so enraged that we can’t still laugh at ourselves.
How would you sell it to audiences in one paragraph?
The Cut of Her Jib is a razor-sharp dark comedy wrapped inside a mystery, where a missing husband, a suspected affair, a suitcase full of cash, and two very different women collide in a battle of class, loyalty, and reinvention. Set between a respectable Edinburgh home and a sun-drenched Portuguese hideaway, the play begins as a disappearance investigation and evolves into an unexpectedly moving, hilarious exploration of what happens when women stop defining themselves through the men in their lives. Belinda, the polished middle-class wife, and Barbara, her outspoken cleaner, trade barbs, secrets, and shifting allegiances in dialogue that crackles with wit and Scottish warmth, while twists keep landing right up to the final moments. Part thriller, part buddy comedy, and part feminist reckoning, it delivers big laughs, genuine heart, and two outstanding roles for actresses who get to be messy, funny, furious, vulnerable, and ultimately liberated.
Do you enjoy participating in the Fringe? And do you have any moments you particularly remember?
I LOVE the Fringe. I started off at Gilded Balloon in 1994 with The Naked Brunch, and I swore I was going to start writing my own and return the next year, and I did with my first play, and it swept the board with awards. I continued with my plays, going to The Gilded Balloon every year, and I feel the Fringe has kind of lost its way since the 90s.
There is a hell of a lot of mediocre and very little new writing that just launches careers any more. I wrote this new play as a two-hander to make it easy to lift and lay anywhere we want, and because I have been producing telly and not writing, this play was playing in my head, so I needed to get it out. I would do the fringe every year if I could afford to.
A core fringe memory that sticks in my head is flyering/rugby tackling legend Dave Allen at The Traverse, and he actually came to see the show. What a man.
What are you looking forward to the most in Edinburgh?
Seeing who is new and who is still standing. There are always those people who aren’t actors but criminals or politicians who take up a space and get the audience in. I like those kinds of controversial spots, and I love propping up the performers’ bars and star spotting. Although my liver is well spent these days, it will be ‘call the police’ if I stay longer than three glasses.
What’s next for the show?
We are going to tour nationally and internationally. We are hoping Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus, Canada, America and whoever else will take us, or I’ll be in The Royal getting a new liver.