The Roommate

When an introverted homebody, puttering around a big, empty house in Iowa City after “retiring” from a loveless marriage, takes in a vegan lesbian who is an ex-potter, ex-slam poet and not-so-ex-chain smoker from the Bronx, worlds collide in Jen Silverman’s dark domestic comedy. Though Sharon and Robyn are two women in their mid-fifties—a rarity for leading roles on stage—it’s clear they’ve been living in different, discontinuous decades. When Sharon invites her new roomie to her reading group meeting, Robyn demurs: “Isn’t that kind of for old people?” Non-plussed, Sharon replies: “We are old people.” Things escalate when Robyn makes Sharon’s resurrection her next pet project. “You are actually younger than most U.S. presidents,” Robyn says. “You are young enough that, if you were a president, you would be a young president … So just stop mummifying yourself.” But can a resurrection be too successful? We find out when Marshall Botvinick directs Julie Oliver and Madeleine Pabis in this Bulldog Ensemble Theater season-opener.