The Roommate Broadway Reviews

Most of what either woman says in “The Roommate,” which opened Thursday at the Booth Theater, is greeted by one or the other response. The two actors, old friends and old hands, play beautifully off each other, expertly riding the seesaw of a play, by Jen Silverman, that throws a Bronx grifter looking to reform herself into an unlikely alliance with a flyover frump looking to ditch her flannel ways. The actors’ intense focus and extreme contrast multiply the material exponentially, sending it way past the footlights to the back of the Booth. But as we’ve learned, sustaining and expanding are two different activities. Indeed, the Broadway supersizing of “The Roommate,” which has been produced regionally since 2015, does not necessarily represent progress, even as it no doubt reaps profit.

This kind of surface-level engagement is all The Roommate can really withstand. Farrow and LuPone are fun to watch — especially Farrow, whose church-mouse character gradually blossoms with the demurely unhinged glee of a midwestern Mephistopheles — and Silverman has written a good number of funny things for them to say. Their chemistry is spicy and real, and there’s nothing wrong with having a straight-up good time. The trouble is that there’s something weird and sour going on in Silverman’s play that precludes uncomplicated enjoyment of its comedy but never quite touches anything really profound. Beneath its veneer, The Roommate is in an on-again, off-again relationship with its own conscience. It doesn’t know quite what it wants to do or say, or, crucially, exactly how bad it wants to break.

If The Roommate would have us believe that this Grace & Frankie could become Bonnie & Clyde in the blink of an eye, it at least does so with enough good humor and easy charm to keep our eye-rolling in relative check.

Between the two of them, you can’t really fail to enjoy an evening of theater, bumpy as the road may be at points. Farrow, especially, shines in a brisk yet moving conclusion that underscores the power of fleeting relationships to alter the trajectory or our lives. The Roommate, as with a real, solid house-sharing arrangement, is neither disastrous nor perfect. It entails moments of awkwardness and adjustment, some settling in and some compromises, to find the best of it.

There’s no escaping the pair’s towering reputations, which turn out to be both a blessing and a trap. In this odd-couple comedy by Jen Silverman, Farrow and LuPone are cast as unlikely housemates in rural Iowa, lost souls eager to move on from their pasts. Directed by Jack O’Brien, the production leans generously into the distinctive qualities associated with its stars: Farrow plays a delicate and curious open book, and LuPone a blunt and sardonic riddle. Like most cohabitations, the results are uneven but not without tangible rewards.

“The Roommate” is serviceably directed by Jack O’Brien, although Bob Crowley’s static set design doesn’t make ample use of the vast onstage space. Incidental music by David Yazbek is an unexpected highlight, bringing some mischief and verve to the otherwise staid production. Ultimately, it's a privilege just to spend a spell with icons like Farrow and LuPone, even if like their characters, they seem somewhat mismatched. When you've got two certified greats, it's hard not to wish for something more than just fine.

It’s near-impossible to look away from Mia Farrow’s riveting performance as a lonely Iowan in Jack O’Brien‘s staging of Jen Silverman’s quirky one-act, one-set play “The Roommate.” One fears looking down at the floor for a second and missing an implosion. Maybe “explosion” is the better word. It’s hard to know. That’s because Farrow’s organic fusing of externals and internals is so central to her work as an actress. When you get to experience Farrow live, as you now can at Broadway’s Booth Theatre, you can see, far better than on film, how deeply she immerses herself in a character.

The estimable Mr. O’Brien, who won a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Tony Award just this year, calibrates the fluctuations in the women’s relationship with subtlety and grace, allowing these two superb actors to navigate the changes in the play’s tone and rhythm at their own pace, on a handsome set by Bob Crowley that hints at both possibility—those rich blue skies—and perhaps vulnerability.

Jack O’Brien (Hairspray, Shucked) directs with a sure hand, and David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit) provides the woodwind-heavy incidental music. There’s no show without the stars — their staccato interplay is expert — and while Silverman’s play often feels like it might evaporate through those beams, it’s nice to spend time with these two old friends. If you can label them that!

In the main, “The Roommate” is a spirited entry on Broadway and a welcome showcase for LuPone and — in particular — Farrow. That actress’s last scenes in the play, giving nothing away, are utterly haunting, having moved beyond been-there-done-that comedy to something outright wrenching, an examination of a character whose whole point is that she’d gone through her whole life not examining herself. It wouldn’t be right to say that these scenes, at the play’s end, make you forget what came before, the jokes that didn’t land. Instead, they put them into context: She’d been playing at being a person, and now, so many hilarious scams later, she’s become one.

Sometimes the old can be full of surprises. That’s the running premise of The Roommate, which brings together two very different senior citizens—Sharon, an unworldly Iowan played by Mia Farrow, and her new housemate, Robyn, a streetwise Bronx transplant played by Patti LuPone—and sends them down paths of self-discovery. It’s also what makes this production of Jen Silverman’s crowd-pleasing comedy work as well as it does. A variation on odd-couple themes, the play tills land that has been farmed many times. Yet it finds freshness in the familiar through a series of small twists—and, in Farrow’s star turn, an enchanting revelation.

It is too early in the Broadway season to call something the worst. That caveat aside, “The Roommate” is the saddest spectacle of wasted talent on Broadway since Andre De Shields played a gorilla in “Prymate” in 2004.

There are a couple twists—one involves a rather questionable Walmart purchase—that push The Roommate from realistic into far-fetched territory. One, unfortunately, is the ending. Again, no spoilers, but it’s a moment for Sharon that should be brimming with possibility, not hampered by implausibility.

Despite the fine efforts of the performers and solid production values including music by an overqualified David Yazbek, The Roommate, running 100 minutes without an intermission, always feels predictable despite its procession of narrative surprises designed for easy laughs. But that’s no reason not to take advantage of the unique opportunity to watch Farrow and LuPone play off each other with the expert comic timing of seasoned vaudevillians.

Although director Jack O’Brien’s production features too many prolonged scene transitions and the end of Silverman’s script is a tad self-indulgent, Farrow’s quietly captivating performance makes The Roommate worth the stay.

It shouldn’t be a terrible surprise that Farrow and LuPone, the ultimate pros with a combined total of 117 years experience as professional performers, keep our attention at all times. It may well be that our appreciation comes as much from memories of their great roles from the past, as from these characters, who are neither greatly nuanced, nor roll-on-the-floor hilarious, although they have their moments. It seems fitting that Bob Crowley’s set of an airy Iowa house feels unfinished, like an outline of a house, or one under construction.

Directed with his usual finesse by Jack O’ Brien and beautifully designed by Bob Crowley (who has created a spacious, airy Midwest farmhouse) and lit gorgeously by Natasha Katz, the play serves mostly as a showcase for the spectacular Mia Farrow (in a long-awaited return to the stage) and her real-life bestie, Patti LuPone, each of whom do their considerable best to both illuminate and overcome Silverman’s often facile writing.