Roundabout Theatre Company presents the Broadway premiere of Marvin’s Room, Scott McPherson's award-winning, wildly funny play about the laughter that can shine through life’s darkest moments. Anne Kauffman (Marjorie Prime, Maple and Vine) directs.
Lee is a single mother who's been busy raising her troubled teenage son, Hank. Her estranged sister Bessie has her hands full with their elderly father, his soap opera-obsessed sister - and a brand-new life-or-death diagnosis. Now the women are about to reunite for the first time in 18 years. Are Lee's good intentions and makeover skills enough to make up for her long absence? Can Bessie help Hank finally feel at home somewhere... or at least keep him from burning her house down? Can these almost-strangers become a family in time to make plans, make amends, and maybe make a trip to Disney World?
Exploring an unsentimental reality with hope, compassion and a dose of wonderfully absurd humor, Marvin's Room is a life-affirming reminder of the gift we give ourselves when we love unconditionally.
Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room may sound, from that description, like a certain kind of TV movie of the week. But this pained yet comforting play cuts its sentiment with laughing-into-the-darkness comedy, just this side of absurdism, that reflects the influence of John Guare and Christopher Durang. And it also suggests a deep understanding of illness and sacrifice, drawn from McPherson's personal family history and the world he inhabited. 'I am 31, and my lover has AIDS,' he wrote in a program note for the play's 1990 Hartford production. 'Our friends have AIDS. And we all take care of each other, the less sick caring for the more sick.' He died in 1992.
It's to the credit of everyone involved - these committed actors, the sensitive director and most of all McPherson - that the connections slow to take hold are soldered like emotional strands that throw off sparks as they finally fuse. Even the vaguely batty Ruth - touchingly played by Celia Weston without an ounce of condescension - addicted to soap operas as she is to the little box that gives her a charge of relief (while setting off the automatic garage door at the same time) plays a key role. McPherson's roar of valedictory comes in Bessie's quiet remonstrance to Lee near the end, that her greatest fortune in life is not to have been loved but to have loved, fully and completely.
Videos