REVIEW: The Odd Couple meets Breaking Bad in Shadow Theatre production
The Roommate at first glance plays like a re-imagining of The Odd Couple – but it’s much more than that.
Jen Silverman’s new comedy-drama, which comes to Edmonton for a Shadow Theatre show after a successful run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, strikes off in its own subversive directions. It plays at the Varscona Theatre until Nov. 10.
Sharon (Coralie Cairns) lives in rural Iowa in a house that could be the set for a sitcom (a wonderfully detailed job by Daniel vanHeyst). Her life has stalled after her marriage failed.
“I’ve retired from my marriage,” she observes ruefully.
Her son, who wants nothing to do with Mom, has bolted. This is no empty nest but an empty life. Seeking some human connection she does something uncharacteristic – she advertises for a roommate “in her 50s,” sight unseen.
What she gets is the roommate from hell – actually from the Bronx, 2,000 miles away. Robyn (Nadien Chu) is a gay vegan slam poet artist who grows suspicious herbs in small pots, and who vigorously goes about upsetting Sharon’s bucolic life.
“I don’t do drugs. I’m self medicating,” Robyn says.
They’re both looking for something in their lives, and begin a tentative friendship. Robyn is not endearing, and has been around the block a few times, but she is striking. Sharon is a solitary, mature mid-American matron with a life on endless repeat.
Robyn is hiding something. Sharon snoops in her new roommate’s belongings and discovers multiple drivers’ licenses with variations on her name.
Neither woman is ready for the metamorphosis that will overtake their lives. Although funny (particularly in the first hour) this is not the stuff of The Odd Couple. Sharon doesn’t know it yet but she’s ready for a complete make-over. Soon her stiff morality is bending into shapes she never imagined. The playwright plots the transformation with skill, developing the characters and pulling laughs out of the awkward and unexpected ways. Sharon enthusiastically grows wings and begins to fly. Robyn’s life, meanwhile, is spinning out of control – and very things that Robyn is trying to put behind her are the things that Sharon is unknowingly reaching for in hers.
The play turns dark. “I find great pleasure in being bad,” exults Sharon. It’s The Odd Couple meets Breaking Bad.
Director Nancy McAlear, who in a delightful and funny turn early in the play has the two actors changing the set in the semi-darkness between scenes while performing a ritualized dance, now cranks up the heat, sending her play into unexpected deeps.
As Sharon and Robyn, the two actresses develop an almost instant chemistry even as they overcome their differences. Chu expertly charts Robyn’s increasing horror as Sharon goes wrong. It doesn’t take Cairns long to let us know that Sharon was always more than the listless life she was living. They’re an interesting study on comic styles – Cairns blunders along in a breathless chipmunk style, while Chu is a mistress of the slow burn.
At the end, Silverman makes time for heartfelt introspection. Things change and life goes on. The final scenes are heart-wrenching, The Roommate leaving us with hope that these two complex and appealing characters will find a way – alone or together.
Photos by Marc J Chalifoux
