MARVIN’S ROOM
But worst of all, Marvin’s Room takes its light from the tube and its inspiration from surefire by-the-numbers formulas. With small-screen predictability, here one character naturally has the key to another’s problem. The surface oddities the characters sport are only decorations to disguise the fact that they’re stereotypes. This play’s inhabitants hide major secrets from loved ones for years–as if they knew a second act was coming. Then they burst out with revelations that, in a moment, break through the barriers of years of silence and misunderstanding. Neat tricks.
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Examples abound of Beth Henley overkill, blowing up a character’s quirks out of all proportion and having them stand in for a personality. Like senile Aunt Ruth dressing up idiotically and painting her face hideously to attend a soap-opera character’s TV wedding. (This is an author’s compassion for his creation?) Or Aunt Ruth’s gratuitous story about a woman who dies in her bathroom; when her relations visit her home later for Thanksgiving, they don’t know she’s dead until they run out of towels in the guest bathroom. (Save this for News of the Weird.) Or the sick joke, repeated three times, that after Aunt Ruth is hugged despite her agonizing back pain, she blisses out when she turns on her anesthetizer. This is what killed vaudeville.
Though Jane MacIver plays Aunt Ruth with a dithering directness, the character still seems a throwback to those mean Carol Burnett spoofs of senility. Mark Rosenthal as Hank snarls convincingly but can’t establish an inner life McPherson only hints at. Tim Monsion’s Dr. Wally is frighteningly inept. At least he didn’t write the part; even Moliere would have found this medical spoofery cruel.
