The Roommate – 16 November 2024

Going off to college is an experience often characterized by meeting your first leather-jacket-wearing, vegan, pot-smoking lesbian, who is deeply intriguing and may be involved in something she shouldn’t be (and you shouldn’t be either). What’s unusual about The Roommate is that she’s also 75-year-old, Patti LuPone and you happen to be 79-year-old Mia Farrow! The Roommate is a touching reminder that misadventure is not just for young folks and neither is naivety. Sharon (Mia Farrow) could be her teenage self – she enthusiastically embraces the excitement that Robyn (Patti LuPone) brings to her life. Sharon is so fascinated by Robyn that she wants to be her and eagerly learns to feel liberated in the way that Robyn does – unconcerned that it’s always at somebody’s expense and blissfully unaware that she might be the one to face the consequences. Minimalist design keeps the focus on these characters and lets these two acting giants command the stage.

The characters’ names are aptronyms – Sharon sees herself as sharing, but Robyn has no illusions about who she’s robbing, and her former name? Victoria sounds like “victorious” to me. Are they the match made in heaven that Sharon thinks they are, or the match made in Iowa that Robyn thinks she orchestrated? My outside assessment is neither, because both hold Robyn in such high regard. Sharon has her first heartbreak over Robyn, and although Robyn is painted to have left to protect Sharon from the consequences of their illegal actions, it seems like there were a lot of red flags along the way suggesting that Sharon was never Robyn’s true concern. Where Sharon could barely contain her joy and her love, Robyn was the out lesbian with intimidating confidence – if the love was real, shouldn’t Robyn have been able to show it in at least one way other than turning leaving into a romantic gesture?

Robyn taught Sharon how to make scam calls and pot brownies, but at no point did she teach Sharon any of the potential consequences for getting caught. In her overexcited crush, Sharon finds herself growing marijuana, and unconcerned about having a roommate with many drivers licenses (Robyn’s explanation for this is an adequate on every level), not maintaining her relationship with her son, and grateful to have been left with broken pottery dolls, full of a white powdery substance that she likely can’t identify. 

Robyn leaves Sharon with a drug  she may not know the effects of taking— think back to the scene where Sharon smoked weed for the first time and had to ask for instructions! On this unknown substance, Sharon could overdose, ingest incorrectly, sell it, get caught with it and not know how to explain it… What if she gets all of that right, but is then chemically addicted and doesn’t know how to get more or even what substance she’s after? Shouldn’t Robyn care about these things? If she cares about Sharon? 

Robyn is not a lover, she’s a user. And she’s wrapped up in hypocrisy, professing to be liberated when she’s really isolated and inhibited. Robyn is trying to quit substances to prove to someone else (her daughter) that she can. Robyn can’t connect well with others in town – maybe social anxiety is why she doesn’t bother to try. Robyn just wants to have fun but never looks or acts like she’s having any. Sounds to me like a perpetual teenager who has made it really far in life without learning anything.

Effectively, Robyn came and robbed Sharon of her innocence and abandoned Sharon when she was certain that Sharon loved her enough to take responsibility for Robyn’s crimes, leaving Robyn free to dance off into the next chapter of her life. In Robyn’s final phone call to Sharon, Sharon’s love was so clear and so true, while Robyn was cold and calculated. She made the call to keep alive the crime she had just perpetrated – making Sharon feel lucky and happy enough to take the fall for Robyn’s actions should it come. This is not a love story. They’re just roommates.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.