The Roommate, a brand new play from Jen Silverman of their Broadway debut, has a simple, one-two pitch: Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow. The 2 residing legends – one a grand dame of American theater, the opposite a traditional Hollywood star – are the one performers in, and purpose to see, a just-fine play. The longtime mates (by way of their late mutual Stephen Sondheim) are the unexpectedly sizzling duo of Broadway’s fall, as a traditional odd couple with a sweet-and-sour, yin-yang distinction that performs to their personas – brassy, unbowed, magnetic; doe-eyed, enigmatic, sly.
Farrow, in her first full-dress Broadway manufacturing since 1979, performs Sharon, a sheltered and stereotypically unsuspecting midwestern girl recent off a mid-life divorce. Lonely and tiptoeing right into a second act, she opens up her spacious, sunlit residence in Iowa Metropolis (midwestern-practical set and costume design by Bob Crowley) to LuPone’s Robin, a Bronx-bred firecracker reluctant to debate her previous – or a lot of something in any respect – along with her chatty, too-inquisitive roommate.
At the very least at first – the preliminary 40 or so minutes of The Roommate’s uneven runtime (100 minutes with out intermission) crackle with the actors’ tangible efforts to imbue their respective archetypes with grace and texture. Silverman’s script, as directed by Jack O’Brien, effortfully foregrounds Sharon as staggeringly naive and conservative – she nonetheless refers to “homosexuals” as one thing exterior her purview (although she’s tremendous with it, she insists, when Robin says she’s homosexual), appears willfully oblivious to her son’s obvious queerness (he lives in Brooklyn and his “girlfriend,” she notes, is “a lesbian”). She fails to establish the marijuana crops introduced in by Robin as something aside from houseplants (she’s by no means tried it, in fact).
The Roommate, as a play, has an odd, considerably confounding pacing, ambling about in its first act, an ungainly getting-to-know-you stage that leans into inventory, to the purpose of close to boredom, save for its two performers’ ever-mesmerizing bodily presences. LuPone, cigarette in hand – Robin is perpetually quitting – blazes about Sharon’s premises, off-handedly occupying each chair and reclining on all reclinable surfaces – the new, live-wire spontaneity to Sharon’s tentative routine. Farrow performs Sharon as virtually brittle in her loneliness, shuffling about her residence, startling herself with the jarring sound of her voice.
Each develop on one another, and the viewers, because the play blessedly picks up in its second half with vital revelations, issues and a sneaky sense of deviance that drew hearty laughs on the present I attended. The play’s most pleasant stretch, by far, is the center part by which the 2 characters and performers actually acclimate to the opposite, their temperatures melding into a simple heat. The wager on the Roommate pays off essentially the most when the duo are in shut emotional proximity, their real-life comedic expertise and fictional schemes working in tandem. For a pleasant few dozen minutes, the play hits a winsome mix of candy and genuinely humorous with a devilish streak, corresponding to a standout scene involving Farrow’s fake French accent, a pretend orphans’ charity and the primary time that Sharon actually impresses the rather more world-weary Robin.
As Sharon, Farrow’s gait and posture brighten within the glow of Robin’s presence, then tentative friendship, then deep, inarticulable and flamable bond. She is the extra refined of the 2 performers, disappearing into Sharon because the character grows from wallflower to unfastened cannon – and schtick to convincing – by present’s finish. LuPone, basically enjoying a barely dialed down and Bronx-ified model of her personal charisma, gives the present a gentle electrical present; when she’s on stage, you might be watching.
Between the 2 of them, you may’t actually fail to get pleasure from a night of theater, bumpy because the highway could also be at factors. Farrow, particularly, shines in a brisk but transferring conclusion that underscores the facility of fleeting relationships to change the trajectory or our lives. The Roommate, as with an actual, stable house-sharing association, is neither disastrous nor excellent. It entails moments of awkwardness and adjustment, some settling in and a few compromises, to seek out the most effective of it.
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