Marvin's Room
by Scott McPherson

Name: Marvin's Room
Brand: Scott McPherson
SKU: 9780822213123
Rating: 3.63 (216 reviews)

Broadway Off-Broadway

Marvin's Room Book Cover — Marvin's Room Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

120 mins Present Day Role(s) for Teen(s) Role(s) for Senior Actor(s) Unit Set/Multiple Settings Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes Comedy

Awards & Recognition

Drama Critics Circle Drama Desk Award Outer Critics Circle

Winner! 1992 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play Winner! 1992 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play Nominee: 1992 Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play Winner ! 1991 Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award Winner 1991 John Gassner Award

Synopsis

Bessie lives in Florida, where she cares for her aunt and ailing father, Marvin.

Aunt Ruth has several collapsed vertebrae and has to wear an electrode pack on her waist with which she can both control her constant pain and open and close her garage door at will.

Unable to speak, and confined to his bed for years, Marvin's only entertainment comes from someone bouncing beams of sunlight, reflected from a small mirror, around his room.

Bessie learns amidst all this illness that she has leukemia and that her only hope is to contact her long-estranged sister Lee to see if her bone marrow is compatible for a transplant.

Lee reluctantly makes the trip to Florida from Ohio, bringing along her two sons, one of whom has just been released from an institution after a wave of arson.

The reunion of the sisters is uneasy at best, with long buried recriminations coming to the surface even as love slowly overwhelms Lee's veneer of selfishness and glib denial.

Bessie’s challenge becomes to reunite Lee and her son Hank before he rejects her forever for her years of neglect.

One by one, Lee and her sons are tested for the transplant, but none of them will be able to donate to Bessie who, for the moment, seems to have gone into remission.

Against Lee's urging that Bessie take it easy, Bessie refuses to condemn Aunt Ruth and her father to nursing homes, claiming that only by caring for them herself will she make her own illness bearable.

During a trip to Disneyland, Bessie collapses.

Lee and Hank, however, have finally begun to communicate as a result of Bessie's attentions to them both.

As the bad news accumulates, the play ends with Bessie taking shelter in her only refuge: In answer to her father’s cries of discomfort, she selflessly abandons her own despair and helps him to bounce the day’s remaining sunlight around his room.

Press Reviews

"Written with a blazing, tender accuracy that grips you with the force of revelation."
— Village Voice

"The themes of death, love, duty, care and service are frugally intertwined in a play of considerable emotional resonance. Laughing one minute, we are shuddering with a stealthy empathy the next. Death has rarely seemed more interesting or love so complex."
— New York Post

"One of the funniest plays of the year as well as one of the wisest and most moving. When the American theatre gains a new voice this original, this unexpected, you really must hear it for yourself."
— The New York Times

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Doctor Wally	—	—	—
Ruth Bessie’s aunt, 70	—	—	Bessie’s aunt, 70
Bob Dr. Wally’s brother and receptionist	male	—	Dr. Wally’s brother and receptionist
Lee Bessie’s sister, late 30s	female	30s	Bessie’s sister, late 30s
Doctor Charlotte	—	—	—
Hank Lee’s son, 17	—	—	Lee’s son, 17
Charlie Hank’s younger brother	male	—	Hank’s younger brother
Retirement Home Director	—	—	—
Marvin Bessie’s father	male	—	Bessie’s father
Bessie 40	—	—	40