Imagine that a storyteller who has been traveling around the country telling tales about your hometown finally brings her act to your area. You would want to have a look to see if the things being said about you at least have a ring of truth.
"The Roommate," Jen Silverman's 2015 one-act that has been produced across the country before making its regional premiere Friday at Mixed Blood Theatre, puts one in the mind of that storyteller.
Staged by Greta Grosch for Prime Productions, the coming-of-middle-age play is set in cornpone Iowa and predicated on overbroad ideas about Flyover Country. The Hawkeye State in "Roommate" is more a generic idea than a real place — a field of stereotypes that is sometimes the butt of the joke, despite director Grosch's gallant deflections as she mines the humor and taps her actors' charisma to make this show a winner.
These shortcomings in the "Roommate" script are too bad. The play's layering of some "Breaking Bad"-style revelations onto an odd-couple premise creates opportunities for theatrical surprises. And the show's orbiting of late-life crises helps to focus on an often-ignored demographic.
Recently divorced after a decades-long marriage, surprisingly naïve 50-something Sharon (Greta Oglesby) is getting to know her new roommate, Robyn (Alison Edwards), a streetwise vegan lesbian from the Bronx who seems like she's running from something.
Both women are ready for transformation. Sharon, who is in a book club but otherwise has no relationships aside from phone calls with her adult son in New York, seems to have missed out on teenage experimentation. She is eager to make up for lost time.
Change agent Robyn, a jaded smoker with a mysterious doll collection, chose Iowa because she wanted to be far away from her former life. The action takes place on an unchanging set composed of a workman-like kitchen with an island, dining area and porch, all credited to BrownKnows Design.
Oglesby, a veteran of the Twin Cities stage known for dramatic roles, and Edwards, a longtime New York-based actor who co-founded Prime Productions five years ago after moving to the Twin Cities, have good chemistry. They click in their rhythm and timing, delivering with complementary relish. Even their occasional opening night fluffs were charming.
The two actors also make good use of physical humor. After Sharon invites Robyn to her book club, Robyn asks: "Isn't that kind of for old people?" Sharon sidles up to her, genial and smiling as if posing for a picture: "We are old people."
"Roommate" is billed as a comedy, and it flips and flaps like one at the outset, with plenty of laughs. But the show is really an odd duck that begins as a sitcom and ends as drama. That stylistic inconsistency muddles the journey of characters hoping to carry us along as they seek clarity in their lives.
'The Roommate'
Who: By Jen Silverman. Directed by Greta Grosch for Prime Productions.
Where: Mixed Blood Theatre, 1501 S. 4th St., Mpls.
When: 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends June 19.
Tickets: $20-$32. primeprods.org.
