The Roommate.

In the first half hour of "The Roommate" at the Booth Theatre a lot happens; and yet, nothing really happens. Like "Frankie and Johnny", the two stale-worth actresses take the stage at the beginning to be recognized by the audience, then take their places for the beginning of the show.

Set in Iowa City, you begin to wonder what a woman like Robyn (Patti LuPone) is doing their. Much like Marisa Tomi in "My Cousin Vinnie", she stands out like a sore thumb! She rents from a true Midwesterner, Sharon (Mia Farrow). Straight forward but naive, Sharon has to navigate the vegan, lesbian. They are an odd couple indeed and when writer Jen Silverman stays with the comedy, the show is fun.

The design by Bob Crowley is underwhelming and the direction by Jack O'Brien is inconsistent. The home of Sharon has little imagination to it. Both LuPone and Farrow reach for the laughs a little to hard almost forcing them on us. While many jokes land, others do not.

The show begins to spiral when the plot does a 180 turn. Robyn is not who we think she is (not that we had a clue up until this point). It seems that the woman from the Bronx, New York, has had a checked past. O'Brien and Silverman never let us fully know who this woman is or was. We do get to know that she was a con artist and that she has a daughter. In the 100 minutes, however, we never get to know her and what makes her tick. Even her personality is plain vanilla... no temper, no insights, no warmth. We just know that she did pottery for a short time in her life. Even then, we don't know why she quit doing it.

Sharon is a bit uptight, literal and at times a bit dense in the ways of the world. Her son now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a designer and fails to realize that he too is gay. She thinks that he loves his mother, but doesn't like her. She phones him constantly to update her life a long length on his answering machine. The kitchen phone is a big part of the play and Silverman tries to playoff a lot of the comedy within the phone.

Much of the idol banter in the play is just that, idol. Where Silverman could have made it an intricate part of the play, it just languished in the Booth's stratosphere. Much of the dialogue was just plain rhetoric and audience members minds began to wander. We were all waiting for the ship to be steered in the right direction. But instead it hit an iceberg!

In the plays last half hour, it went into an entirely new direction. Sharon did a complete about face with her personality and attitude about life. She suddenly wanted to be someone completely different then herself. A bold move by the writer even though it pulled up short and landed a loud thud.

"The Roommate" was a much anticipated play. I know I was looking forward to it. The story looked intriguing, both Farrow and LuPone are great actors; Marsha Mason was put on as associate direct with O'Brien who has directed some terrific shows in the past. The writing was just not good and it left a lot of the audience disappointed for sure. How bad was it? The two critics that were by me slept through most of it. One was out for a good 80 out of the 100 minutes; the other, about thirty minutes!

Mia Farrow, Patty LuPone, The Booth Theatre, Broadway, Tony Awards, Marsha Mason, "The Lion King", Aladdin' "Harry Potter".