“The Roommate” at Booth Theatre
Glenda Frank in New York
21 October 2024
While The Roommate, a two-hander by Jen Silverman, offers the actors substantial roles, it does make certain demands on the audience. The most pressing is the suspension of disbelief. All theatre requires us to step away from the obvious: the set is not really a room in a house, the darkening sky is a lighting effect, and the actors are not the people they pretend to be. But The Roommate also requires that we suspend logic and probability. At the performance I attended the audience was more than happy to comply.
Mia Farrow as Sharon.
Photo credit: Matthew Murphy.
Sharon (Mia Farrow), a semi-reclusive divorcee who is terrified of trying online dating because she might meet a serial killer, has offered to share her Iowa home with a stranger. She seems to have done no background check. She doesn’t even know that Robyn (Patti LuPone) hails from New York City, from the Bronx, which has one of the highest crime rates in America. When Robyn arrives in her dark leather coat, sunglasses, and tough stride, Sharon seems curious and excited. Not a hint of fright. The realism of the play is punctuated with these absurdist challenges.
But the actors in two compelling performances pull it off. Farrow’s Sharon has long blonde hair in braids, which look great on her, and speaks in a girl’s voice. She’s adorable and full of surprises. Farrow’s facial expressions, pauses and gestures are the stuff of good performances. You could turn off the sound and still enjoy her. Robyn – edgy, nervous and defensive – brings a dark world into the semi-rural landscape, including some healthy-looking marijuana plants and a white powder in plastic bags hidden in her porcelain doll collection. Later she boasts about teaching her daughter how to finance her college tuition. She says proudly that she is able to boost and strip a car in record time.
Sharon wins Robyn over just as Farrow has enthralled us. The bad girl who rented the upstairs bedroom becomes Sharon’s inspiration. She wants to hear everything; she wants to try everything. When Sharon talks about her as a new friend, Robyn asks, “Are we friends?” “Of course!” Sharon answers. “You taught me how to smoke pot.” And then Sharon turns on a long-time friend who runs the local reading group by trying out a phone con Robyn taught her. We expect fumbling, but she is impressively adept. She has the knack and is proud. Together they play a trick on the book club by serving them a special recipe for brownies. But when Sharon returns from a trip to Walmart with an automatic rifle, Robyn draws the line. Everyone in Iowa has a gun, Sharon tells her. Robyn convinces her to try online dates. When Sharon accepts a date with a doctor, she discovers a new source of excitement that has little to do with courtship.
LuPone brings depth to this brightly-lit world. I was drawn into her confusion and emotional generosity. Robyn is trying to reform and thought she could escape temptation remains in fly-over country. Sharon tempts her at every turn, not least with her admiration for Robyn’s skill set as an outlaw. We watch Robyn struggle with each regression back into her old life and then, in a powerful performance, her final, difficult decision. Jack O’Brien has directed his two gifted actors with sensitivity to their gifts and just the right tone and pace in each scene. The production impresses with Iowa open-field lighting by Natasha Katz and spacious kitchen set by Bob Crowley.
The Roommate premiered in the 2015 Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and was picked up by Florida Studio Theatre. In 2017 it opened at both the San Francisco Playhouse and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, produced it a year later. In 2019 it moved to Long Wharf Theatre, in New Haven, Connecticut before its trip to Broadway.
