Just give them all the awards.
Thank God something truly good has opened on Broadway!
"The Roommate" is a brilliant example of the magic that can happen when a director gets out of the way and lets brilliant actors do their thing. This is not a jab at director Jack O'Brien, but a high compliment. Clearly O'Brien is a strong, intelligent captain of the ship... and the best captains know that their job is to help everyone else to THEIR job to the best of their ability... not let their ego get in the way and try to make it all about them. The best direction is the direction that doesn't advertise itself.
The actual script of "The Roommate" (written by Jen Silverman) is...fine. And I don't mean that as a criticism either. If I picked it up in Drama Bookshop would I be captivated? No. But it does its job, which is far more than I can say for the majority of new plays I've seen recently.
The reason for this play's existence is to function as a structurally sound playground for its stars Patti Lupone and Mia Farrow. And that is reason enough for any of us.
Too often, especially this season, I've seen excellent performers working as hard as they can to try and make subpar material work. They are carrying what feels like the dead weight of the rest of the production team on their shoulders. "The Roommate" is the opposite and is a fantastic example of excellent performers elevating already good material. Farrow and Lupone are obviously pros, and the exemplar of that is their organic, natural performances. They are honest actors and, because of their honesty, their "humanness" we come to adore the characters they're playing. We are rooting for them purely because we care about what seem to be two real people living their lives in front of us.
The plot is difficult to describe in that the plot has little to do with what the story is ABOUT. And what it's about is difficult to put into words. But playwright Silverman has helped us with that. At one point Farrow's character Sharon delivers a lovely monologue about the inadequacy of words... about how sometimes a person can use a word to define themselves because it's the best they have to work with... not because the word really feels...RIGHT. This idea is first introduced in a conversation about Lupone's character (Robyn)'s sexuality. She says early on that she's a lesbian. Then she says that she was married to a man who she loved very much, and has a daughter. Sharon asks if she's bisexual. "No." But the conversation eventually winds its way to the way we try to encapsulate complex aspects of all our lives. In this way the title of the play becomes deeply meaningful. Does it accurately describe the relationship between its two characters? Yes.
But, really, not at all.
The basic plot (some spoilers ahead) is this:
65 year old midwesterner Sharon has decided to take on a roommate. She is "retired" from her marriage (the only thing she ever "did", job-wise, in her life,) one her husband "retired" from, without her knowledge, long before her. She has an adult son who lives in Brooklyn who she loves very much and is still a little over protective of. She is a 65 year old innocent... sweet, kind, wide-eyed. In many ways this play could work if Sharon were a 16 year old ingenue. The fact that that essence is incapsulated in an older woman is powerful and terribly beautiful.
The roommate she has found is Robyn - a far too cool for Sharon former Bronx resident who, for unknown reasons, has decided to relocate. She used to be a potter, but no longer. She hates poetry, but writes it. She is a vegan, and brings vegetables into the house Sharon has never even heard of before. She has an adult daughter in New York who she desperately tries to reach on the phone - with little luck. She grows marijuana that Sharon "likes" because it looks pretty (she has no idea what it is.) She leaves move in boxes on the porch for weeks. She wears a leather jacket. She brings electricity into Sharon's life - first when she encourages Sharon to start living her life again - go on dates, try pot...And then, when Sharon discovers the dozens of fake ID's amongst Robyn's things, to take a walk on the darker side and dip her toe into the world of crime.
Sharon starts to give Robyn a run for her money... when she goes on a date she finds herself bored while making out in the guy's car, so she pickpockets him. She begs Robyn to teach her the scams she used to pull with her daughter... and turns out to be pretty good at them. Her first target is even a good friend. She turns her bookclub into a pot dispensary and, just to be careful, buys a very large gun from the local Walmart, which Robyn insists she returns - Sharon sadly complies - as if her mother just told her she needs to take back the bright red lipstick she blew her allowance on. But Robyn knows there is far more at stake.
The piece was best encapsulated for me with Sharon's line towards the end of the play which, paraphrased is along the lines of: "You search for meaning...and then you find it...and then it disappears." The play could metaphorically be summed up by the question: "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
There are cracks in the beautiful, if dangerous, summertime-esque world Sharon and Robyn have created for themselves. Robyn always remains a bit of a mystery. There is so much we, and Sharon, never learn about her. In the hands of a lesser actress this would be annoying beyond belief. In the hands of Lupone we have no doubt that all the answers are there...we just don't get to know them. And that's part of the tragedy of the piece. What do you do when the person you love, and want to know as well as you know yourself, remains...unknowable. How do you handle the fact that, like Mary Poppins, the person you want to spend every minute with will disappear when the wind changes? How do you go from believing you will never have community, to miraculously finding it, to once again being alone?
And part of the beauty is that heart-on-her-sleeve Sharon manages to surprise Robyn just as much as Robyn surprises her. What a beautiful thing to watch a guileless person somehow reveal layer, after layer, after layer with no attempt to hide the person you couldn't even imagine was there in the first place.
There is no big "twist" in the play. Two characters meet, get to know each other, bond, and then separate. Both are wacky, dangerous, kind and deeply lovable. It is an exploration of a specific kind of loss I haven't seen in a play before, and it is a JOY to see a story dedicated to two women who aren't in their twenties, thirties or even forties. Lupone is right... older female characters are usually the most interesting - because they have so much to draw on... both history...and power.
Lupone has just come out of another star turn with her performance in this fall's "Agatha All Along" - which she is already receiving well deserved award nominations for (and I have to admit, part of me chuckled internally every time she said the name "Sharon" (if you know, you know.)) That show also focused on the stories of women over thirty-five and it was one reason why it was so powerful. That show featured a very different character from Lupone, but one who still had deep strength, intelligence and wit (could Lupone play any other kind of character? Or, rather, would any character lack those qualities in Lupone's hands?)
Just hand Lupone and Farrow their Tonys now. It is joyful how much they deserve them. But it's sad that Broadway has gotten to such a place where they don't even have any competition. Just think of the miraculous season we would have if projects were chosen on the strength of their creatives... not by "bee in their bonnet" gatekeepers or an obsession with factory produced well-known IP projects. Lupone and Farrow are giving us a masterclass. But there are other masters out there - some discovered, some still unknown, who deserve an opportunity to just do what they do in supportive circumstances.
Hats off to this beautiful production. I highly suggest you go see it while you can.
Hunter Reed
THE ROOMMATE is currently running at The Booth Theatre on Broadway
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