The Roommate, a new play from Jen Silverman in their Broadway debut, has an easy, one-two pitch: Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow. The two living legends – one a grand dame of American theater, the other a classic Hollywood star – are the only performers in, and reason to see, a just-fine play. The longtime friends (through their late mutual Stephen Sondheim) are the unexpectedly hot duo of Broadway’s fall, as a classic odd couple with a sweet-and-sour, yin-yang contrast that plays to their personas – brassy, unbowed, magnetic; doe-eyed, enigmatic, sly.
Farrow, in her first full-dress Broadway production since 1979, plays Sharon, a sheltered and stereotypically unsuspecting midwestern woman fresh off a midlife divorce. Lonely and tiptoeing into a second act, she opens up her spacious, sunlit home in Iowa City (midwestern-practical set and costume design by Bob Crowley) to LuPone’s Robin, a Bronx-bred firecracker reluctant to discuss her past – or much of anything at all – with her chatty, too-inquisitive roommate.
At least at first – the initial 40 or so minutes of The Roommate’s uneven runtime (100 minutes without 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 still refers to “homosexuals” as something outside her purview (though she’s fine with it, she insists, when Robin says she’s gay), seems willfully oblivious to her son’s apparent queerness (he lives in Brooklyn and his “girlfriend”, she notes, is “a lesbian”). She fails to identify the marijuana plants brought in by Robin as anything other than houseplants (she’s never tried it, of course).
The Roommate, as a play, has an odd, somewhat confounding pacing, ambling about in its first act, an awkward getting-to-know-you stage that leans into stock, to the point of near boredom, save for its two performers’ ever-mesmerizing physical presences. LuPone, cigarette in hand – Robin is perpetually quitting – blazes about Sharon’s premises, off-handedly occupying every chair and reclining on all reclinable surfaces – the hot, live-wire spontaneity to Sharon’s tentative routine. Farrow plays Sharon as almost brittle in her loneliness, shuffling about her home, startling herself with the jarring sound of her voice.
Both grow on each other, and the audience, as the play blessedly picks up in its second half with necessary revelations, complications and a sneaky sense of deviance that drew hearty laughs at the show I attended. The play’s most enjoyable stretch, by far, is the middle section in which the two characters and performers truly acclimate to the other, their temperatures melding into an easy warmth. The bet on the Roommate pays off the most when the duo are in close emotional proximity, their real-life comedic skills and fictional schemes working in tandem. For a delightful few dozen minutes, the play hits a winsome blend of sweet and genuinely funny with a devilish streak, such as a standout scene involving Farrow’s faux French accent, a fake orphans’ charity and the first time that Sharon truly impresses the much more world-weary Robin.
As Sharon, Farrow’s gait and posture brighten in the glow of Robin’s presence, then tentative friendship, then deep, inarticulable and combustible bond. She is the more subtle of the two performers, disappearing into Sharon as the character grows from wallflower to loose cannon – and shtick to convincing – by show’s end. LuPone, essentially playing a slightly dialed-down and Bronx-ified version of her own charisma, provides the show a steady electric current; when she’s on stage, you are watching.
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.
