The Rubinstein Kiss

Synopsis

1953. In McCarthy's America, Jakob and Esther Rubenstein are betrayed and punished for an act of industrial espionage. Could this be the greatest miscarriage of justice of the twentieth century? 1975. New York. Matthew Maddison meets Anna Levi in front of an art gallery photograph of Jakob and Esther sharing one final kiss before they part. Young, radical and falling in love, together they seek justice for the past. Inspired by a true story, The Rubenstein Kiss explores the mysterious corridors of history to reveal the anguish of a family, a quest for atonement and the truth about a crime that divided the world.

Our Review:

24 November 2005

The death of Arthur Miller has left a gap in the market for politicised drama on epic American themes. But James Phillips’s attempt to fill that breach with his first play inevitably suffers from the comparison. Arthurian nods abound: the sins of the father, ‘Reds under the bed’ hysteria, Marilyn Monroe. (At one point a character even quotes verbatim from The Crucible.)

The Rubenstein Kiss, which Phillips perhaps unwisely directs himself, feels hemmed in by these signifiers, unable to forge an identity of its own between respectful homage and slavish imitation.

The case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the husband-and-wife spies executed in 1953 for leaking atomic secrets to the Russians, remains a contentious cause célèbre worthy of dramatic exploration. Phillips does so by inventing his own Rosenbergs, Jakob and Esther Rubenstein, whose bogus history mirrors their real-life counterparts all the way to the electric chair.

In scenes span...

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Latest User Review

62.6.139.13) - 5 December 2005:

This is a play most notable for its two leading actors. Will Keen and Samantha Bond give fantastic performances as the Rubensteins who are used as a metaphor to tell in part the story of the Rosenburgs, who were executed for espionage in the 1951. Their story is gripping and there is an interesting little twist half way through the play; however, some viewers may feel that this stretches coincidence a little too far. The play is about half and hour too long and at times the moves between the seventies and the fifties detracts from the tension that is buiding between the members of the family leading up to and after the trial. The technique is used for good reasons and it would give away the plot to discuss this further, but sometimes I would have preferred them to hold the action in the fifties longer and perhaps even show a little dramatisataion of the trial itself. The scenes set in the seventies, except for the final twist, where a now 20+ year old FBI agent played by an excellent Gary Kemp delivers some devastating news, are not as interesting as those in the fifties. This is the writer's first production and for this it is admirable, brave and promising. The acting from the cast is outstanding. Those lusting after the return of the death penalty would do well to watch. ...

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