Simon Ward reviews Ruthless – the Survival of Ruth Madoff at the Arches Lane Theatre

Roger Steinmann’s play is a semi-biographical but fictionalised account of Ruth Madoff (Emily Swain), wife of the convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff. It is an examination of how a life can unravel, and the consequences for a family following a terrible disgrace. Not to mention the corrosive and corrupting effect of great wealth, meaning that no-one can be trusted, and friendships are transactional and will be destroyed when circumstances change.

The facts of the Madoff family story are stark. Bernie Madoff ran the world’s biggest known Ponzi scheme – a type of investment fraud which pays profits to early investors from the funds of later investors, with little or no actual underlying investment. At its peak the fund was worth $65billion, and the Madoffs had the lifestyle to match. But that all fell apart when Bernie was arrested in December 2008, subsequently convicted and sentenced to 150 years in prison in June 2009. He died in April 2021. Their elder son Mark had already died by suicide in 2010, on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. His younger brother Andrew died of cancer in September 2014.

As the play begins, Ruth is setting the table for breakfast, fantasising that her sons will be joining her, imagining that her husband may be too busy. In reality, the children have already been dead for years. Later, she will learn about her husband’s death on the TV news, only to find herself then hounded by reporters and paparazzi. Utterly incapable of dealing with the horror that her life has become, she retreats further and further into a world of make-believe – she wills herself into thinking that the pizza delivery boy (Evan Emanuel) will whisk her away to his hometown of Venice. She even packs her bag and gets herself made-up for the journey.

Steinmann, who also directs, seems to be suggesting that Ruth has always lived in a kind of bubble of her own invention, never questioning her husband’s rise from humble beginnings to a financial titan. This is the only world she has ever known – they have been together since she was fourteen years old – and maybe she never wanted to break the spell by digging too deep into the source of their wealth. The boys, too, were born into this world and would struggle to make sense of it all falling apart. Looming over the back of the stage are three large portraits (created by Pai Koomphi), Bernie’s the largest in the middle, flanked by his two sons. The presence of these men, who never appear, is keenly felt throughout. It is a kind of altar at which Ruth continues to worship, long after the feet of clay have been revealed.

The central performance by Emily Swain is a solipsistic triumph. Under a shocking blond wig, she attempts to maintain her dignity and status, in spite of her much-reduced circumstances. She faces multiple accusations of complicity from voices off, and she goes so far as to wonder whether she might be at fault for her lack of curiosity over her husband’s business affairs. But she never once shows any concern at all for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the fraud – the impact on their lives so much more devastating than on her own. She seems unable to show any sympathy, even when the reality is thrown in her face. What’s more, she is callously indifferent to the consequences as she waves a gun around and shoots indiscriminately to disperse the reporters harrassing her. It is undoubtedly the portrait of a monster; Swain’s performance suggests that she may just have an inkling of how monstrous she is.

Ruthless – the Survival of Ruth Madoff is running at the Arches Lane Theatre until Sunday 29th June