Marvin’s Room

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Make a distracted decision in Monopoly, and it could send you directly to jail without passing go. Only a minor setback. There’s always the next turn. Make a distracted decision in the game of chess, and the stakes could be higher, finding yourself in checkmate.

The thing with a game though, unless it is a world tournament, there is always another time, another place, and another game.

In the game of life, a distracted decision can cost years off a relationship. A thoughtless self-focused decision can dig a hole wider than the Grand Canyon. A life or death issue in a family can build a bridge stronger than the Golden Gate.

In a brilliant move by Director Craig A. Bond The Evergreen Players’ production of Scott McPherson’s play Marvin’s Room combines the two elements.

The stage becomes a chessboard, and the characters make their moves accordingly. Inspired by Bond, and designed by Peggy Morgan Stenmark, several flats have chess figures painted on them. Large cubes of Styrofoam are so arranged they can easily be moved to form different shapes indicating the numerous scenes Marvin’s Room traipses through. The actors themselves make the scene changes following specific patterns on the chessboard floor, moving in synchronization, as chess pieces tend to do. Although this became tedious at times, the effect of what was being done and why held its impact. This was lost, however, on some members of the audience who had not noticed the stage floor had been painted to resemble a chessboard.

Marvin, a stroke victim cannot move or speak observes the games being played by his sister, Ruth (Rose Rogers), his two daughters Bessie (Michelle Hanks) and Lee (Lisa DeCaro), and his two grandsons Hank (Jos Esqueda) and Charlie (Michael Dyer). Generally, when Marvin’s Room is produced, the old man’s presence is noted off stage with bright lights and shadows. In this production, Bond embraces the audience with distinct involvement. A headboard of his bed sits in the center of downstage, and the audience becomes Marvin. Following just about every scene, an actor removes a piece of the headboard, indicating Marvin slipping further into oblivion. A highly creative ingenious approach.

Marvin’s stroke occurred 20 years ago. Bessie felt the responsibility of committing her life to taking care of him and her Aunt Ruth who has by this time shuffled off into another dimension with one foot precariously tapping into the real world while the other foot searches for solid ground flirting with an obsession to small details and her soap opera. Rogers plays with humor with Rose’s minute obsessions over Bessie’s health, her real and imaginary fears, and the soap opera characters who loom bigger than life in her distorted world.

Hanks surrounds Bessie with the willingness to care for her Aunt and her Father with tenderness and love streaked with her own loneliness and weariness. Her life does not belong to her and time has stripped her of even knowing what her own life is. She’s tired. Aunt Ruth has her own simplified solution to Bessie’s weariness, but tests with Dr. Wally (Peter Burghart) reveal leukemia. Burghart’s portrayal of the bumbling doctor would be even funnier if he played the role straight, rather than playing it for laughs. Dr. Wally’s strings of insensitive forgetfulness, his bout with cockroaches, his confused prankster type approaches smacked of a would be comedienne wanting to be on stage rather than an incompetent insecure doctor. Dropping syringes on the floor then using them, sitting on his tourniquet not being able to find it would be enough to induce even the sickest patient to walk out.

Bone marrow replacement is what Bessie needs, and there is one hope for her. Her sister, Lee living in Ohio severed communication many years before. Lee wanted her own life, wanting nothing to do with a stroke victim.

What she wanted and what she got were two different elements. Now her life revolves around caring for her two sons, with most of her energy funneled into Hank who now lives in a mental institution for burning down their house. DeCaro portrays Lee with frustrated zaniness coupled with motor mouth excuses for her life and no clue how to talk to her confused detached son, Hank.

The juxtaposition between Lee and Bessie emphasizes the guilt the two sisters have dug for themselves. John Wakefield fields the psychiatrist, Dr. Charles with a disinterested preoccupied mind. Dr. Chares borders on a stereotypical psychiatrist with either too much on his mind or not enough.

Esqueda plays Hank with the lost little boy syndrome who wants to be reached, wants to be taken seriously, doesn’t trust, has no reason to trust amplified by a mother who doesn’t know how to talk with him except yell. Blame and excuses rule all of their lives. Hank doesn’t even know he has an Aunt Bessie. Charlie, the younger son, finds solace in books a means of escaping the turmoil swirling around him. Dyer is charming but could escape his lines by relaxing more into his character.

When push comes to shove, family ties are stronger than a lifetime of disagreements. With Charlie and Hank in tow, Lee arrives at Bessie’s, willing to be tested for a bone marrow match. Well, Lee and Charlie are. Hank doesn’t know. He needs to think about it, and rightfully so. He has so little power in his life anymore, this is one time he can exploit it. It takes him a while, but Hank discovers Bessie’s genius for communicating with him. She treats him with dignity and respect. Esqueda paces Hank who is not use to dignity and respect and finds it difficult to swallow. He needs time. Bessie gives that time to Hank and Esqueda gives it to Hank.

Lee and Bessie’s relationship pop to a head. Convinced her Father should be in a retirement home where he can be taken care of properly, Lee pushes Bessie to the edge. Bessie’s commitment to her Father flies on threatened wings. Linda A. Williams plays the Retirement Home Director with exuberance and purposeful drive of a retirement home director, whose main job is in sales, who isn’t as organized as she pretends to be, but enthusiasm is what counts.

Marvin’s Room received several awards including The Outer Critic’s Circle Award, The Drama Desk Award, The John Gassner Playwriting Award, and The Dramatist Guild Warriner Award. McPherson died November 7, 1992 from complications from AIDS.

Even though Marvin’s Room does not concern itself with AIDS, it does a high dive into the complications of care giving for the elderly, the seriously ill, and the numbness created for families directly involved.

McPherson wrote in the program for the Hartford Stage Company’s production of Marvin’s Room December 1990:

“Now I am 31 and my lover has AIDS. Our friends have AIDS. And we all take care of each other, the less sick caring for the more sick. At times, an unbelievably harsh fate is transcended by a simple act of love, by caring for another. By most, we are thought of as “dying.” But as dying becomes a way of life, the meaning of the word blurs.”

There is a fine line between heavy weariness from the actors, as experienced with Bessie, and the dragging on the lines. Act I suffers from too many pregnant pauses between lines. The energy drags and some of the choice lines lose their significance in the process. Act II picks up its energy as the confidence of the actors takes over.

Would that Center Stage could grant the 57-year-old Evergreen Players at least four weeks on their runs. Three weeks is definitely better than two, but three weeks short changes the quality of work the cast and crew exhibit. No question Center Stage is in high demand, as well it should be, but The Evergreen Players deserve high kudos and recognition for their dedication, longevity, attention to detail, and professional attitude toward their craft.