Marvin's Room
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Cititour.com Review
A popular play in the 1990s, Marvin’s Room was a hit Off-Broadway show that became a film but, until now, never landed on Broadway. It does so with the star wattage of Lili Taylor and Janeane Garofalo, but this sluggish production from Anne Kauffman, a top Off-Broadway director making her Broadway debut, is low on both laughs and sentiment.
For Scott McPherson’s play about dying and living in the face of death to make an impact, it ought to have healthy doses of both. It’s the story of two estranged sisters who are reunited when Bessie (Taylor) is diagnosed with leukemia and Lee (Garofalo) brings her two sons to Florida so they can all be tested as bone marrow donors. But Marvin’s Room only scratches the surface when it comes to dealing with complex family relations and soldiering on in the face of uncertainty.
McPherson’s own career was cut short at the age of 33, when he died of AIDS in 1992, and this play shows promise but falls short of greatness. The title character is the sisters’ father, who is still alive despite a stroke suffered 20 years ago. Throughout both acts of this two-hour, 10-minute show, he lies in his bed, occasionally audible but seen only through the frosted glass of his room. He’s part of the reason the siblings grew apart. Elder sister Bessie moved to Florida and has cared for him and her aunt Ruth (Celia Weston) ever since, while Lee is now a single mother to two teenage sons, including 17-year-old Hank (Jack DiFalco), who set fire to the family’s home.
Marvin’s Room may have been ahead of its time when it premiered in 1990, but now it seems dated. At the time, we were coming off a decade of jolly TV sitcoms about family (The Cosby Show) and aging (The Golden Girls). This play takes those scenarios to much darker places, but in the more than 25 years since it was written, dark comedy has gone mainstream in some very compelling and inventive ways, making McPherson’s play seem tame by comparison.
That’s because Kauffman and her cast downplay the comedy, but don’t find enough depth in the characters to make their struggles resonate. Weston is touching as the soap-opera-obsessed Ruth, but both Taylor’s and Garofalo’s performances lack the intensity of family relations. For a play about a family coming together amid illness and death, Marvin’s Room feels lifeless.
By Diane Snyder
Visit the Site
http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/Shows-Events/Marvins-Room.aspx
Cast
Janeane Garofalo, Lili Taylor, Celia Weston, Jack DiFalco, Carman Lacivita, Nedra McClyde, Luca Padovan, Triney Sandoval
Open/Close Dates
Opening 6/29/2017
Closing 8/26/2017
Preview Open/ Preview Close Dates
Preview Opening 6/8/2017
Closing Open-ended
Box Office
212-719-1300
Theatre Info
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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