What I liked
The whole thing works. Right away. Starts fast. Emma Davis is immediately engaging, funny, and rambling in a way that’s trustworthy, vulnerable, and charming. And (somehow) makes us forget about the fact that she’s attached, via some very well-executed costumery, to a floorbound Claire Layden playing, very realistically at first, a bed.
I don’t want to give too much away. Claire Layden delivers a performance that is a showcase in physicality, voicework, and characterization that results in a “bed” that’s so perfectly earnest, objective, and hilarious that she serves as the perfect counterpoint to Emma’s internal struggles, but would also fit right in in the Beast’s castle.
Together, Emma and Claire play off each other incredibly, elevate each other’s performances, and validate the narrative belief in a way that it the audience never even questions why a bed is talking. Until they bring it up.
The show also features one of the most well-conceived and executed sight gags I’ve ever seen. It turns what could have been a moment of technical necessity into one of the biggest laughs of the night.
Go see it.
What I didn't like
N/A
My overall impression
Roominate is a love letter to our internal monologues and an underrepresented reflection of what depression feels like from the inside. I’m glad I bed to see it.
