Divamensch

Richard and I saw *Marvin's Room* on 7/2/17.  It's a play from 1990 about a woman with cancer who gets in touch with her semi-estranged sister, asking her to be tested to be a bone marrow donor.  I saw the 1996 movie with Diane Keaton as the woman with cancer, Meryl Streep as the sister, Leonardo di Caprio as the sister's son, and Gwen Verdon as the sisters' aunt.  This was the Broadway premiere, with Lili Taylor as the woman with cancer, Janeane Garofalo as the sister, Jack DiFalco as the son, and Celia Weston as the aunt.

 

The play is sometimes funny, sometimes sour, but not often insightful.  We've seen this kind of story many times since, and usually done better.  All of the performances were good, director Anne Kaufmann seemed to know what she was doing, and the audience seemed to enjoy it, but the play itself doesn't really hold up very well.  Plus the stage was too big for such a slight and intimate play.  It's just plain not a Broadway play, especially not at this theater.  Out of all of the thousands of plays that Roundabout could have chosen, why did they choose this?