Oct. 04--Scott McPherson's "Marvin's Room," now in a fine production from the Shattered Globe Theatre that includes the Tony award-winning actress Deanna Dunagan, is a comedy about so many of life's great sadnesses: estranged families, dementia, aging, ill health, regrets, cancer.
"Well, you party on, Mr. Critic," you, perchance, are thinking.
But if you've ever spent time in an emergency room, a mental health institution, a doctor's office or in and around a geriatric ward, you will have seen some really funny stuff. I mean, sometimes it's a matter of laughing so you don't cry, but still. I was recently with my dad in such a place and was greatly tickled by a taped sign saying "Do Not Sit Here," below which had been carefully placed the only chairs in the entire joint.
Pythonesque, truly. I clicked at it and sent the image to my best pal.
I kept thinking about that moment as I watched the first scene of "Marvin's Room" on Saturday night.
"Marvin's Room" is a play about a friendly woman, Bessie, who is taking care of aging relatives -- at the expense of her own life -- only to find that she has herself developed leukemia, which then brings the other wacky members of her estranged family to her side, since she now needs a bone marrow transplant. Bessie is in Florida; the crazy relatives are from Ohio. So was McPherson, but more about him in a moment.
In that first scene, Bessie (played here by the very moving Linda Reiter) is in the office of a Dr. Wally (Don Tieri). Dr. Wally is wacky -- he keeps losing his instruments or sneezing over the sterilization, and Bessie, who is terrified that she has leukemia, feels like she has disappeared down some absurdist rabbit hole with this crazy dude with all the power. And so she has. What this scene, which is smartly staged in Sandy Shinner's production, achieves so incredibly well is to embody the horror of that moment when you watch medical professionals behaving like this is just another day in the office for them -- and so it is, whereas for you, or your loved one, there are real-time, life-and-death changes transpiring in the room.
Laugh, lest you cry.
The other thing about McPherson's play is that the writing is incredibly beautiful. I hadn't see the play since about 2009 and I'd forgotten just how very beautiful -- silly of me, really, since that adjective also was employed by Richard Christiansen in 1990, when "Marvin's Room" first opened in the Goodman Theatre's old studio space (and Frank Rich later said a version of the same thing when the play moved to New York). Christiansen kept going back. "Marvin's Room" really is that good.
McPherson had been working in the Goodman box office. By 1992, he had died of AIDS. He was 33. At the time, a lot of people saw "Marvin's Room," which is not explicitly about AIDS, as a metaphor for the effects of that plague, and that resonance lives on. If only McPherson had lived on. The plays such a poet would have written!
But, a quarter century on, we now have a very emotional and funny revival of "Marvin's Room," anchored by Reiter -- who clearly has some skin in this game -- and featuring the redoubtable Dunagan as dotty Aunt Ruth. There's also a terrific performance from Rebecca Jordan, whose work I had not seen in quite some time, as Lee, Bessie's sister and a woman who has disappeared inside her own navel until she realizes the fulfillment that can come from taking care of family. In terms of authorial point of view, McPherson moves back and forth between Bessie and Lee's sons, Hank (Nate Santana) and Charlie (Kyle Klein II). McPherson especially saw himself in the bookish Charlie, a kid who looks out at all the adult and brotherly craziness that surrounds him and hopes that love will prevail. Choose love, really, is the message of the play.
In time I think Shinner's production, which is staged in the trickiest of the three spaces at Theater Wit when it comes to achieving intimacy with an audience, will cohere further. The stakes need to rise in a couple of spots, and some lulls still need attention. The design, by Nick Mozak, feels to me just about 75 percent of an idea. You feel yourself wanting to push the production further to the core of the work, to grab it by the scruff of its neck as you would a student almost but not quite living up to potential.
By then maybe it is just something about the honest insight of this play that demands the near-impossible. Reiter's performance here is among the most profound and humane of her long Off-Loop career -- and all these skilled, unselfish Chicago actors know they have the gift of McPherson's words. They're not about to waste the moment. A lot of people have never been inside "Marvin's Room," except they probably have.
Or will be.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
3.5 STARS
When: Through Nov. 14
Where: Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Tickets: $20-$33 at 773-975-8150 or theaterwit.org
