
Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow in The Roommate. Photo: Julieta Cervantes
It seems unlikely that The Roommate would have made it to Broadway without a pair of megawatt stars attached. Although playwright Jen Silverman makes interesting points about aging and loneliness, their slim script strains to be funny and poignant at the same time, often falling short of both. Even the considerable talents of Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow only occasionally elevate what begins to feel like an extended sitcom premise that spends too much of its time on exposition rather than action.
The Roommate has been kicking around regional theater markets for nearly a decade, and in many ways, the large expanses of the Booth Theatre dwarf what should be an intimate, small-scale story. Bob Crowley’s airy farmhouse set, with floating walls and picturesque prairie backdrops, more closely resembles a chic, rustic country store than a careworn, lived-in home. The viewer senses that Sharon (Farrow), a wistful Midwestern divorcée, and Robyn (LuPone), her new cohabitant from New York, should feel as if they’re on top of each other—but even in tense, private scenes, the actors look as if they’re acres apart.
It’s clear that Crowley and director Jack O’Brien have taken an arch approach to the play’s sense of reality. Before the show even begins, Farrow and LuPone enter the stage together, their names projected on the proscenium. They acknowledge the audience’s applause before beginning the first scene in earnest.
Interstitial music by Tony-winning composer David Yazbeck telegraphs the tenor of each scene too cleanly—upbeat and peppy one moment, dark and sinister the next. Natasha Katz’s lighting design does little to establish mood or a sense of passing time, and blackouts between scenes tend to drag. The costumes (also by Crowley) look a bit on the nose: chunky denim and Pippi Longstocking braids for Iowan good-girl Sharon, motorcycle boots and dark sunglasses for Bronx bad-girl Robyn. The sense projected is that these are types, not people.
That’s a shame, because The Roommate is at its most compelling and sharply observed when it addresses how older women are viewed—and aren’t—by society. No longer married or actively mothering, Sharon acts as if her purpose in society has vanished. She clings to any kinship, such as her burgeoning friendship with Robyn, that makes her feel useful and needed. Robyn, on the other hand, uses the casual disregard shown to women of a certain age to her own advantage: it becomes clear that her presence in Iowa isn’t strictly benevolent, and that she can execute certain nefarious acts because no one would expect them of her. The thrill of stepping away from community norms—and the ways that can re-energize both women, however briefly—finally start the play cooking.
Unfortunately, it comes too late. Silverman spends the nearly the first hour on banal exposition, with information about the two characters emerging in dribs and drabs. A different director might have infused this long dance with a palpable tension, but O’Brien mostly lets it hang flat. Farrow is consistently captivating—she effortlessly projects a genuine fragility that never seems cloying—but LuPone often feels as if she’s reined in, her natural spark curiously muted. Her performance becomes more lively around the time the script stops spinning its wheels, but even then, the action is rushed toward a forced denouement.
Although the show’s presence on Broadway clearly owes a debt to its leading ladies, it feels at once too cerebral to qualify as a typical star vehicle and too thin to work as a satisfying play. Not unlike someone you’re forced to live with, it takes up space awkwardly, its good qualities eclipsed by a mounting series of annoyances you cannot overcome. The Roommate doesn’t necessarily warrant an eviction notice, but at the same time, you wouldn’t be too disappointed if it pulled up stakes and moved out.