Marvin's Room

By Scott McPherson
Directed by Roslyn Johnson
1st Sept - 24 Sept, 2022

Delany & Delaney is excited to be a sponsorship partner with Ad Astra Theatre for the Marvin’s Room season.

Directors Notes

When I first read the script for Marvin’s Room I was immediately taken back to a series of experiences which were part of my own journey with my mother in her final illness. I wondered how universal the impact of that kind of memory might be. Then when this cast encountered the script, I watched with interest as they each found their own resonance with an experience as a carer, family member, friend or artist in and around the content of this deceptively domestic drama. It is a rich vein of humanity that Scott McPherson has mined here, and I doubt anyone will leave the theatre without echoes of their own encounters with similar situations.

The domesticity of the scenarios in this work are actually its strength. We are all going to recognise an interaction with a sibling, a parent, a doctor or some kind of bureaucrat. And we will also recognise the way tragic or dramatic events are always leavened with laughter at some ridiculousness of life.

The cast of Marvin’s Room have been a gift to direct and have formed their own family for this season. I truly appreciate their dedication to finding their character’s voices and places in the story of Marvin’s family. Marvin is like the playwright for us – he is present, yet somehow gone. There is wisdom left behind, some quirks, some unfinished business and a legacy of love.

We should all be so lucky to have this. In the words of Marcus Aurelius “Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun.”

PLEASE NOTE : during the performance, there will be strobe lighting effects used.

About Marvin’s Room

Set in Florida, Marvin’s Room is a bittersweet and at times acerbic and darkly humorous study of a family learning to love the ties that bind. A seriocomedy, this play will resonate with anyone who has dealt with issues of aging, mortality and caring.

The script received a number of Drama Desk awards, and the play has had several Broadway runs. In 1996 it was adapted as a film of the same name, with a cast that included Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Keaton received an Academy Award Best Actress nomination for her performance as Bessie.

A story that throws together characters who are dealing with aging, estrangement, mental illness, carer fatigue, and ties that bind a family; this play has a heart that is visible only once you excavate the layers of frustration, conflict, nostalgia, habit and façade which are the everyday stuff of life for all families.

Bessie lives in Florida, where she moved to care for her father Marvin who “has been dying for twenty years” and her aunt Ruth, who has been crippled with back pain until a recent ‘cure’ which involved an electronic implant (with an occasional inconvenient side effect of opening the garage door). Bessie is now facing her own difficult diagnosis, so she needs to call on help from her long-estranged sister Lee. Brash Lee arrives with both real and metaphorical baggage, including her two sons – 17-year-old Hank who is on leave from a mental institution following an incident that burned down several houses, and 14-year-old Charlie, withdrawn and isolated.

The renegotiation of relationships, boundaries, and roles challenges both women. After twenty years in the self-imposed roles of the ‘martyr’ and the ‘wild one’; the siblings have to return to the origins of their division in order to move forward in a new look family. The challenges of Hank’s criminal tendencies and Ruth’s eccentricities derail and divert their attempts to reshape their family at times, while the one constant in their lives – the unseen presence of Marvin – ties them together, against a background of dealing with a range of odd and dubious medical professionals.

Comedy and pathos are balanced and intertwined in this family drama which somehow captures the complexity of modern family relationships. As Lee says to Hank “My feelings for you…are like a big bowl of fishhooks. I can’t just pick them up one at a time. I pick up one, they all come”.

CREATIVES AND CREW

Director and Sound Design – Roslyn Johnson

Assistant Director & Stage Manager - Meg-Louise Snieder

Lighting Design - Donovan Wagner

Set Design & Construction - Ian Johnson

CAST

Bessie - Fiona Kennedy

Lee - Elise Lamb

Ruth - Phillipa Bowe

Hank - Jayden McGinlay

Charlie - Kieran McGinlay

Dr Wally - Tom Harwood

Dr Charlotte/Retirement Home Director - Marita McVeigh

Bob & Marvin’s voice - Nicholas Sayers

Show Poster

Reviews

“Marvin’s Room is a weirdly surreal, sometimes soapish drama: it’s about rebelling against your family history, but also about gracefully accepting the cards you’ve been dealt. One commentator called its style “absurdism shot through with compassion”. It is colourful, sad, but mostly funny. On its surface is a human drama (albeit black comedy), but its subconscious themes of caring, complicated family love, and unfulfilled potential will resonate – and don’t be surprised if the play creeps up on you the next day. It may even make you cry.”

Beth Keehn - Stage Whispers | Read full review

“Marvin’s Room was warm, funny, and moving, balancing the heavy themes of the work with small, close moments of absurdity and earnest emotion..”

Backstreet Brisbane | Read full review

“Directed by Roslyn Johnson, Ad Astra’s Marvin’s Room is enthralling from top to bottom. This rendition of Scott McPherson’s famous play is something magical. Marvin’s Room remains as a fantastic realism play commenting on the trials and tribulations of life.”

Jake Goodall - Bravo Brisbane | Read full review

“Oh life is bigger, it’s bigger than you,” REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’ reminds us along with the character of Hank during Scott McPherson’s 1990 comedy-drama “Marvin’s Room”. It is one of many song snippets that serve to barometer the emotions of the story in Ad Astra’s production of the bittersweet tale.”

Meredith Walker - Blue Curtains | Read full review