Review: THE ROOMMATE at Profile Theatre

Sharon (Gail Dartez), a sheltered Midwestern housewife who has recently "retired from her marriage," takes in a roommate to share her empty Iowa house. Robyn (Eleanor O’Brien), a guarded New York transplant clearly running from something, moves in. What starts as an odd-couple arrangement of mismatched habits and clashing worldviews slowly turns into something far stranger, and far more consequential, than either woman anticipated.

Profile Theatre's production of Jen Silverman's dark comedy THE ROOMMATE, directed by Jamie M. Rea, will have you laughing out loud one moment and wincing in recognition the next. It’s a poignant look at loneliness, and at the cultural impulse (one that feels especially loud right now) to relegate “women of a certain age” to the background. (As a woman of a certain age myself, I’m really starting to hate that phrase.)

For Robyn, a little time in the background is exactly what she’s looking for. But Sharon has never been in the foreground. They each have something to learn from each other.

The set, designed by Alex Meyer, deserves its own ovation. The wallpaper, the mounted small plates, the chair cushions – it paints a portrait of a life lived carefully and changed reluctantly.

THE ROOMMATE is a showcase for two actors, and these two are outstanding. O'Brien plays Robyn in a register notably understated for her, but it's exactly right for a woman trying desperately to remake her life. Dartez's Sharon, meanwhile, comes face to face with a part of herself she clearly never expected to find in her 60-odd years.

Part of what makes this play so good is how messy it lets itself be, how comfortable it stays sitting in moral ambiguity. That's a quality I've been drawn to a lot lately (the musical Kimberly Akimbo is one of my great loves of the past few years). It shines a light on the gray areas where most of us actually live, most of the time, in some way or another. While you might not be able to imagine yourself in this exact situation (though don’t rule it out), you will definitely feel the pull between who you've always been and who else you might be.