Sharon’s never had a roommate before. In fact, there’s a lot Sharon’s never done before, but Robyn’s about to change all that. Jen Silverman’s The Roommate shatters expectations with its witty and profound portrait of a blossoming intimacy between two women from vastly different backgrounds, as they navigate the complexities of identity, morality, and the promise of reinvention. Being bad never felt so good as it does in this riveting one-act about second acts.
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.
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.
2017 | Williamstown, MA (Regional) |
Original Production at Williamstown Theatre Festival Williamstown, MA (Regional) |
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Videos