It takes a gifted playwrights to find comedy in the darkest of scenarios and a talent-blessed theater company to bring these words to pitch-perfect life, which is why Actors Co-op’s long-awaited revival of Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room succeeds in evoking abundant laughter through well-earned tears, with an emphasis on the former.

Estranged sisters Bessie (Francesca Casale) and Lee (Tara Battani) have made separate lives for themselves over the past twenty or so years.

Spinster sister Bessie has spent these two decades in Florida caring for her father Marvin, who’s been dying “real slow” to make sure his daughter doesn’t “miss a thing,” and for her back pain-crippled Aunt Ruth.

Meanwhile a thousand miles away, single mother Lee has problems of her own, beginning with an eleven-year-old (Marek Myers as Charlie), who did so badly in remedial geometry, he’s now taking a remedial remedial class.

Even more of a headache is seventeen-year-old Hank (Dean Hermansen), confined to a mental institution after having deliberately burned down the family home some months earlier.

And since Lee hasn’t visited Hank since back when he was being kept unconscious on Thorazine, it’s no wonder he’s surprised to see her today, and even more astonished to learn that he has an Aunt Bessie who might need his bone marrow to save her life, that is if his mother and brother don’t prove a match.

And so Lee and her boys head off to Florida in hopes of saving the life of a sister she hasn’t seen in years and an aunt her two nephews scarcely knew existed.

Basing his 1991 off-Broadway play on his own experiences as a teenager, McPherson (who died of AIDS at age 32 a year after Marvin’s Room premiered) reveals a remarkable gift for finding humor in the darkest of circumstances while never once venturing into sitcom territory, thanks in large part to a cast of characters whose eccentricities may be proof that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Take for instance Dr. Wally (Brian Habicht), who can’t seem to recollect what to call the “whatchamacallit I tie around your arm to make your veins pop out,” or Aunt Ruth (Crystal Yvonne Jackson), whose portable electric anaesthetizer has an inconvenient tendency to open the automatic garage door at odd assorted moments.

All of this adds up to something truly wondrous when performed by actors who realize that the best way to get laughs is to play it straight-and-honest, and a director like Thomas James O’Leary, who knows how to bring out the best in every single one of them.

Casale, remarkable as always, radiates saintly goodness and near superhuman strength when strength is what’s needed, and Battani is once again stunning as a woman whose hard edges and tough talk hide a carefully protected heart.

 Jackson is a hoot and a half as daffy aunt Ruth, Habicht makes for the most winning of oops-prone doctors, Kimi Walker is terrific times two as Hank’s psychiatrist and a retirement home director, Justin Bowles does amusing double duty as Dr. Wally’s competence-challenged brother Bob and the ailing but unseen Marvin, and Hermansen and Meyers give their more experienced castmates plenty of competition in the talent department.

Scenic designer Nicholas Acciani’s revolving set provides an ingenious solution to Marvin’s Room’s frequent scene changes, each to a different location, and his design is more than matched by the contributions made by dream team members E.B. Brooks (costumes), Avery Reagan (lighting), David B. Marling (sound), Lori Berg (properties), and Dylan Price (original music).

Kassy Menke is stage manager, Mia Cotton and Emmett Lee Merritt are assistant stage managers, and Annie Szeliski is assistant costume designer, with “special thanks to David Atkinson and Jeff McGrath for their work on scenic design and additional lighting design help by Martha Carter.”

Originally scheduled to open in March of 2020, Marvin’s Room’s long-delayed Actors Co-op debut has only been made richer by the experiences its cast (and indeed all of us) have gained over the past two years in finding humor and light in the darkest of times.

Simply put, the Co-op’s latest is as richly rewarding as a play and production can get.

Actors Co-op, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood.
www.actorsco-op.org

–Steven Stanley
February 27, 2022
Photos: Larry Sandez

Tags: Actors Co-op, Los Angeles Theater Review, Scott McPherson