RUTHLESS
is a 2025-Stage Play by Roger Steinmann about the tragic Survival of Ruth Madoff,
wife of the USD 65 Billion-Wall Street-Ponzi Fraudster Bernie Madoff.
This One-Lady-Trauma had its World-Premiere in London on 3 June 2025.
The Play was originally conceived in German as TEUFELSKREIS.
Roger Steinmann
Author, Director & Producer
Roger Steinmann is a Swiss director and producer who is the auteur of his own Hollywood films and theatre.
Born on 6 November 1961, he began making Super-8 films at the age of eight. Among his many award-winning short films in his youth, DIE TÜRE and DIE FLUTKATASTROPHE were broadcast on Swiss national television in 1976 and 1978, respectively.
In the 1980s, Steinmann turned to theatre, and in the 90s back to film and to Hollywood. His best-known work is ILLUSION INFINITY (2004), starring Dee Wallace (E.T.), Mickey Rooney (Night at the Museum), Barbara Carrera (Never Say Never Again), and Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show).
In 2017, Steinmann began shooting PhonY, an ambitious feature film set across various international locations. Filming in Switzerland, as a stand-in for the snowy Canadian landscape, and in tropical Thailand. The final segment, which starred Burt Reynolds, Talia Shire, and Faye Dunaway, had to be cancelled following Reynolds' untimely death; it was further impeded by the Covid-19 pandemic.
During this period, Steinmann returned to theatre and wrote the social-distancing satire WIN=WIN, which, in 2022, he produced and directed in Switzerland.
His play TEUFELSKREIS, adapted in English as RUTHLESS: The tragic Survival of Ruth Madoff, has premiered in London on 3 June 2025, with Steinmann again as producer and director.
Further original stage plays include twin and triplet mistaken-identity crime-comedy WENN DER DRILLING MIT DER ZWILLING, and the post-digital-dystopian satire w.w.STEINZEIT.
The latter is in preparation for a 2026 premiere, with interest in the USA, Spain, Switzerland and Germany.
Steinmann was educated at the Swiss Business School. Since 1984, he continues to preside over a shareholder company—at the time, he was the youngest person in Switzerland to do so. Steinmann divides his time between his native Switzerland and his self-imposed ‘exile’ in Phuket, where he runs a boutique hotel. A seasoned world traveller, he speaks eight languages, including French, Spanish, and Thai.
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