Glasgow writer to take new "gin-soaked dark comedy" to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The Cut of Her Jib is a ferocious tale of marriage, class and the death of good men.
A blistering new dark comedy from award-winning writer and director Kathleen Ruddy is set on a storm-lashed Hogmanay in Edinburgh. The Cut of Her Jib begins with a disappearance: a husband vanishes, leaving behind his wife, his possible mistress, and the cleaner, along with a bottle of gin and three decades of resentment: “The marriage was already dead—they’re just getting rid of the body.”
A biting “coming-of-middle-age” comedy, The Cut of Her Jib continues Ruddy’s run of fiercely funny, female-led storytelling. She is the writer behind Sex, Chips & Ouzo; Spare Ribs; The Devil Wears Primark; Death of a Playboy, Check Your Coupon, and Glasgow Hard Tickets - works that have collectively earned over fifty five-star reviews, a Fringe First Award, and a BT Award for Comedy.
Rubber Ear Productions, founded in Glasgow in 1995 to create female-driven comedies, return to the Edinburgh Festival where several of Ruddy’s earlier hits first premiered at the Gilded Balloon.
Kathleen Ruddy’s work spans theatre, film and television. Her debut play Glasgow Hard Tickets won launching a career that has
toured extensively across the UK and Europe. She has also worked in television and film, including as a location producer for Channel 4’s A Place in the Sun, and recently returned to acting in a lead role in The Sunshine Murders for Paramount Pictures and Channel 5 working alongside Nick Moran, Nina Wadia, Stephanie Becham, Peter Andre and Marina Sirtis.
She is joined by actor and producer Deborah Whyte, who plays uptight Morningside housewife Belinda Crabbs. Whyte’s career includes television appearances in River City, The Grey Area, and The Flu That Killed 50 Million, alongside stage work at the Edinburgh Fringe, Citizens Theatre, Traverse Theatre, and national tours.
Ruddy and Whyte first met on the Edinburgh film A Spanking in Paradise, which won two Trailblazer Awards at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Their long-standing friendship, and many shared “rants about men and hormones”, sparked the creation of this play.
Original theme music, Murder to The Land, is composed by acclaimed Scottish singer-songwriter Dot Allison in collaboration with Anton Newcombe.
Writer Ruddy and local Edinburgh musician Dot Allison are long-term friends who shared the nineties and a “very rowdy Glasgow flat” together.
The Cut of Her Jib will be one of the stand-out new plays of this year’s festival and is lined up for future touring in the UK and internationally.
More information on the run of dates at Stephenson Theatre at theSpace, Surgeons' Hall, can be found here.