Living Together: DET’s Production of ‘The Roommate’ Depicts Middle-Age Angst With Lots of Laughs, Superb Acting

Most of us have dealt with the awkwardness of living with a roommate with whom we don’t mesh, perhaps in college or as a young adult just entering the workforce. The experience can range from annoying to downright miserable.

In Jen Silverman’s play The Roommate—freshly off Broadway, and now being produced by Desert Ensemble Theatre as the company’s final season opener—the women trying to share living space are both 60-ish, with failed marriages and adult children.

When lonely Iowa divorcee Sharon places an ad looking for a roommate, Robyn, an enigmatic lesbian from the Bronx, shows up. They initially seem to have nothing in common. Sharon is a shy, anxious book-club member who’s looking for ways to break out of her sheltered life, while Robyn is a pot-smoking vegan with a mysterious past who wants to settle down.

Sharon does not approve of Robyn’s dietary choices, nor does she like the fact that she hasn’t quite kicked her tobacco habit; Robyn doesn’t appreciate Sharon’s nosiness. Neither is sure this whole co-habitating idea is going to work out.

But bit by bit, the women get to know each other and find common ground. Matrimony did not last for either of them, and they both have strained relationships with their adult children. Their relationship begins to warm up.

Still, Sharon continues to pry into Robyn’s private life (including boxes containing personal belongings), and she discovers a surprising element of Robyn’s past—but desperate for some excitement in her own life, Sharon is intrigued rather than shocked.

It would be unfair to reveal much more. I’ll just say that the relationship between the roommates evolves in some very interesting ways. 

A two-person play can only succeed with strong actors who both bring their A game. Thankfully, director Kudra Wagner chose a couple of pros.

Tammy Taylor is very well cast as Robyn. She’s attractive, tough, witty and worldly-wise. Though she’s ready to turn over a new leaf, she makes no apologies for her sketchy past. “There’s a great liberty in being bad,” she says. Her Robyn is someone you’d feel comfortable smoking a joint with on the back porch … as Sharon does in one of the play’s pivotal scenes.

Sonia Reavis is perfect as the traditional, jittery Sharon, who longs for personal connection now that her son has moved away, and she’s split from her husband. “He retired from the marriage before I did. He just forgot to tell me,” she says. Reavis has some of the best comic lines, which she tosses off with aplomb. Puzzled about where her adult son got his good looks, she muses, “His father looks like a potato!”

These two actresses have superb acting skills and terrific onstage chemistry. There is never a false moment. The funny moments elicit big laughs, and when the plot turns serious, you can hear a pin drop. 

Both Reavis and Taylor have extended telephone conversations with offstage characters, which are not always easy to pull off. Appropriate pauses and facial expressions while one is “listening” to the person on the other end of the line are crucial to make it all believable—and they both nail it. These performances should be remembered when awards season comes around.

Wagner deserves credit for excellent casting and for bringing out the best in these two. Congrats to Toby Griffin for creating a charming, homey Midwestern set; to Nick Wass for excellent lighting; and to Andrew M. Edwards for terrific sound and original music.

Though this production of The Roommate is nearly two hours long with no intermission, the time seemed to fly by. The audience was captivated throughout the production.

The Roommate is a poignant, funny look at how people with very different backgrounds can overlook their incongruities and touch each other’s lives in a meaningful way. It brings to mind the opening line of a poem by Brian A. “Drew” Chalker: “People come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.” They often change us for the better, either way.

Go see The Roommate. It will stick with you long after you’ve left the theater.

Desert Ensemble Theatre’s production of The Roommate will be performed at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, through Sunday, Nov. 23, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, at 2300 E. Baristo Road, in Palm Springs. Tickets are $44.20, and the running time is just less than two hours, with no intermission. For tickets or more information, call 760-565-2476, or visit www.desertensembletheatre.org.