Echoes of Ruby Dark

From the flyer:

"Echoes of Ruby Dark is the story of a woman's life as a street singer. She is forever changing her name and appearance, divining her future by stars or by street lights. She spends the long blue nights singing and telling stories of her immediate life, as though the telling were an act of exorcism. After she bears her son, she attempts to erase her life, a past she would rather forget. The consequences become part of a cycle from which the only escape is the story Ruby imagines for her son, and finally tells in the lightning-like phrasing of long blues lines.

"Ruby and her son tell their story with remorseless clarity, in a shifting flow of images remembered and invoked in language that at once recalls the lyrics of songs and the eyewitness accounts of survivors."

The 1982 production of "Echoes of Ruby Dark" was considered to be one of the best plays of the year by Helen Garner (National Times, 2 January 1983)