Michael Portantiere takes a look at Marvin's Room:
Dark comedies don't get much darker that Scott McPherson's funny, sad, beautiful play Marvin's Room, about a caregiver who contracts a serious illness herself. It's a moving story in terms of content alone, and from its first presentation in 1990 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, the play has carried the added emotional weight that its author was suffering from the scourge of AIDS. McPherson died in 1992, shortly the acclaimed Playwrights Horizons production of his masterpiece ended its run. Now, Marvin's Room is on Broadway for the first time, courtesy of the Roundabout Theatre Company, in a staging that's eminently praiseworthy but for one major, surprising flaw. . . . |
