Playwright Jen Silverman likes domestic disruptions: and her dramedy The Roommate playing at Stages offers a new take on the comedic tradition of two conflicting personalities trying to make things work.
You know: Laverne and Shirley, Felix and Oscar, and a big dose of Kate and Allie, who were also roommates who move in together after divorces. And don’t forget Joey and Chandler, Monica and Rachel, Mork and Mindy, Leonard and Sheldon, Larry and Leon. Cohabitation and its complications remain a familiar set up both on film and the stage.
Directed by Jessica Jaye and Derek Charles Livingston, this play feels much like a sitcom, but with some Thelma and Louise vibes. But what makes this play different is that it mixes two divorced women from disparate geographical places, but with the common denominator of being in their 50s—one of the most overlooked demographics for both characters and actresses.
Houston audiences are in for a treat to see the excellent work by Houston favorite Deborah Hope (who was also the 2023 Houston Theater Awards Best Actress Winner for an unforgettable performance as the lead in August: Osage County) and veteran film and stage actress Sara Gaston. They are both terrific artists and deliver remarkable performances that captivate the audience for the 95-minute production.
Hope plays Robyn, a guarded and brittle transplant most recently from the Bronx, who has moved to Iowa City to room with Sharon, played by Gaston with aplomb as a lonely divorcee who exemplifies the notion of “Midwestern Nice.” Sharon learns a thing or two about reinvention as her friendship with Robyn deepens. There are so many opportunities for revelations and spoilers, but that’s no fun, so suffice it to say that secrets unravel, and that provides the conservative and conformist Sharon with some unexpected opportunities to lean into Robyn’s observation that “There’s a great liberty in being bad.”
Their relationship has a predictably rocky start: Robyn shows up in Sharon’s kitchen, and what a great set it is (Liz Freeze), replete with a big fridge, marbleized counters, multiple doors for storage, heavy duty mixers, Brita filtered water, really, all the tools of Martha Stewart level domestic success. But Robyn is a vegan: so many rules for what you can’t do, can’t consume. That will be mildly ironic as her past unfolds.
For enlightenment, there is a sun room on the side, which will be perfect for Robyn’s plants: she likes “to grow things.” Sharon thinks the Bronx is dangerous; Robyn isn’t so sure about Sharon’s complacency about tornadoes. Silverman reminds us how difficult it is to be a roommate at all: distrust is always already there at the beginning, especially if it is two complete strangers. It’s the box of chocolates thing: you never know what you are going to get.
The tacit message is that for two middle-aged divorced women who are not close to their adult children, economics and fraught emotions might require such a domestic arrangement. It’s a timely show with so much current concern with family estrangement and affordability: it seems like a likely path for multiple intersecting reasons.
There is also the romantic notion of “starting over,” and Robyn has some prior experience with that. She is from the jaded Bronx, says she is gay, is smug and evasive, yet also claims that she is a poet. But she likes her poems to be performative: it is slam poetry. If Robyn traffics in “emotion recollected in tranquility,” she has to have an edge. When Sharon wants to know more as she shares her dissatisfaction with her “reading group,” Robyn rebuffs her, saying “poetry can’t be explained.”
Silverman is clever: Iowa City may be boring and safe to someone like Robyn, and even Sharon, who says that “she isn’t a relaxed person,” even though not much is going on except her once-a-week job and a book club. But Iowa City is a creative mecca—home of the internationally famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which has produced some of the world’s best-known poets and fiction writers.
Both women seem oblivious to where they really are both literally and figuratively, and meeting each other shakes that up. They are getting stoned nearly a stone’s throw from one of the most famous bastions of emotionally vulnerable literary art, and the crafty craft of making things up. Both trajectories are important to understanding the script.
Sharon makes Robyn realize that she might hide, but she cannot escape the influence she holds over others through her example and instruction regarding certain “lucrative” enterprises. Robyn makes Sharon realize that you do not have to be who you think you are forever. You can change: you can listen to Mary Chapin Carpenter sing about “Passionate Kisses” one minute, and rock out the next. There aren’t as many rules as you think; yet, on the other hand, there are rules for relationships and life, and it is often really tricky to figure out those rules once strong emotions and attachments are in play.
In spite of the rom-com vibe and the sitcom-inspired banter between these two characters, Silverman does have some deep thoughts about how conventional appearances can easily cover up discontent and a completely different person once they give up the restrictions of convention of social expectations. On the other hand, The Roommate also offers the caveat that a hippie can walk through your door with ceramic dolls, a stash of pot, leather jackets and a disarming bluntness that can make you think that this person is a lot of things, but not fake. Being authentic and phony simultaneously is what Silverman is working with here.
The gift of this play is that this clash of personalities and values isn’t something you automatically know how to negotiate if you are in the thick of it. The play intensifies as more secrets are revealed, and it’s exciting because you probably weren’t able to guess many of them, so that suspense is sustained.
There is a telling moment when both women note that their kids only speak in present tense—as if their pasts can be laid to rest, and the present moment should dominate the future, which isn’t as predictable as they previously thought it would be. Robyn says she is a “malleable changeable template,” but it seems important that she is saying that in middle age. Sometimes, you have to decide to “give it up,” whatever that is, and the roommates facilitate versions of that for each other, and there are prices to pay.
But Silverman’s accomplishment is to remind us of the lesson that we all learn sooner or later: people are not what they seem, and Robyn and Sharon are both capable of the brilliant disguises that are part of coping to one degree or another. Roommates may or not be forever, but their decisions and their consequences may last a very long time. Acceptance may seem kind, but ostensible rejection may be the kindest killing of all.
Performances continue through November 22 at 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at The Gordy theater, 800 Rosine. For more information, call 713-527-0123 or visit stageshouston.com. $44-$79.