Everyone’s overwhelmed by the presidential election, and how could it be otherwise with the fate of American democracy hanging in the balance? Backstage at the Booth Theatre, Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone, who are starring in Jen Silverman’s comedy “The Roommate,” are as tense as any politically sentient human being right now. But they try to leave the panic-inducing headlines at the stage door. How else could they perform this very necessary public service of entertainment? Eight times a week this fall, Farrow and LuPone have been providing Broadway audiences with much-needed relief from doom-scrolling.
You can practically see the stress falling away from theatergoers as they become putty in the hands of these cunning troupers, who are finding laughs in every corner of this “Odd Couple”-esque comedy, scheduled to run through Dec. 15. A two-hander that speaks directly to women of a certain age wondering whether a second act is still possible, the play revolves around a mousy Iowa woman named Sharon (Farrow), who undergoes an almost unthinkable character transformation after taking in a roommate.
Robyn, (LuPone), a hard-bitten lesbian from New York, enters Sharon’s orderly home with the force of a truck barreling down the Cross Bronx Expressway. A vegan who smokes medicinal herbs and has no time for Midwestern niceties, Robyn has had many lives. She’s been a potter, a poet and a felonious con artist.
Sharon, a 65-year-old divorcée who hasn’t been with a man s.