We are taken to the Mid-West of the USA with a very tidy kitchen setting where everything has its place and would for the next umpteen years. Enter Sharon, wonderfully played by Lucy Bell with great comedic timing. Dressed in conservative jeans and the right blouse, her restlessness is evident. Her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down by someone who will reflect the questions she has started to ask herself. Who is she? Like water in a kettle the steam has to be released.
Jen Silverman’s dialogue is vital and clever highlighting one person’s search for freedom and another person demonstrating the price we may pay. The audience was in for a ride.
Robyn, her new roommate, a dry, sardonic and New York weary woman, shows up with obvious secrets trailing behind her. Wonderfully played with a great New York accent, she slowly reveals who she is as Sharon bluntly asks all the wrong questions. In hip New York clothing and announcing that she is alternative, two states and personalities meet. Boxes with Robyn’s hidden past pile up in the neat kitchen stirring Sharon’s curiosity propelling her forward to unleash her inner self. Even the milk has to change as Sharon is introduced to a different way of living and being.
The actors immediately present an uneasy chemistry between the two women revealing to Sharon that her learning French, pretending that she may go to Paris is all about seeking freedom but there is a price to pay. Sharon reflects all that Robyn isn’t and the audience senses that she is seeking the opposite. Searching for a conservative community and escaping her past life, she collides with Sharon and the two set off on a venture and adventure.
As Sharon moves forward and Robyn goes backwards, the kitchen unravels, rubbish is on the floor and boxes and memories are unpacked. Sharon reveals her personality and the audience laughs with her, not at her, and there is a sense of ‘go girl’ as she reveals her alter ego. At the same time, the audience observes with sympathy and empathy as Robyn is focusing on containing her previous way of life but is drawn to Sharon’s exuberant movement in to a new way of being and thinking.
The acting convinces the audience how Robyn is perfect as the foil to Sharon and the repartee between them is fast, funny and poignant at the same time. Distant children only visible on the phone add some sense of both women’s history and issues. Without giving the ending away, both move forward and there is a wonderful twist at the end.
To book tickets to The Roommate, please visit https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-roommate/.
Photographer: Brett Boardman
