Darkly comic roommates take the stage

Friendship, secrets and intimacy all come to light in “The Roommate,” a dark comedy presented by OutCast Productions in Langley.

The last production in the theater company’s 2024 season, “The Roommate” opened Friday and runs until Dec. 1.

For the first time in its history, the Black Box Theater is running a play that is also currently on Broadway.

Ned Farley, managing artistic director and one of the founders of OutCast, said that even though the independent theater contracted “The Roommate” over a year ago, he kept expecting to hear from the company that owns the rights that OutCast couldn’t show it to due to regulations that limit the number of licensed performances.

“Lo and behold, never got that email,” Farley said. “Instead, we got the email reminding us we had to buy a couple more scripts.”

Described as “The Odd Couple” meets “Thelma & Louise,” “The Roommate” by Jen Silverman has been on Broadway for the past two months.

On Whidbey Island, the two roommates of a certain age are played by Nancy Pfeiffer and Gail Liston.

“I was intrigued that it was a two-woman, middle-aged play,” Pfeiffer said. “That doesn’t come along too often.”

Pfeiffer takes on the role of Robyn, a New Yorker with a mysterious past and bad habits who flees to Iowa to become the roommate of divorced housewife Sharon. The two women form a close friendship that metamorphizes into something else as time progresses.

“It’s a character that is very different from my own personality, which I like and is challenging,” Pfeiffer said.

Liston, like Pfeiffer, has been in many other productions on South Whidbey, including one from OutCast’s very first season.

“Sharon is a fun role,” Liston said. “She is naive, yet desperate for knowledge. She’s also very lonely and doesn’t know how to live her own life. She gets to discover all that in this play.”

Pfeiffer said she was both intimidated and delighted by the Broadway appearance of “The Roommate” with well-known actors Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow. Liston has seen only small clips from the Broadway production, but she thinks audiences may be more familiar with it than some of OutCast’s other shows.

Pfeiffer, Liston and Phil Jordan, the show’s director, have all worked together before, which made this show an enticing project.

“I got the chance to talk with the playwright a little bit in the summer, which was very fun,” Jordan said. “(Silverman) was very clear that this is not a comedy, this is not a farce and this is not a drama. It’s something else.”

He described the show as being about people’s own worst inclinations. Two women find each other and push each other in unhealthy directions.

Farley is always on the lookout for scripts that fit OutCast’s mission and Whidbey’s demographic, which made “The Roommate” a good candidate.

“It’s funny,” he observed. “There’s a bit of dark humor in there and there’s a bit of pathos too, because they’re very different and yet they each have an impact on the other.”

He advises people not to wait too long to get their tickets, since the theater’s September show nearly sold out by the end of the first weekend.

Eight performances run from Nov. 15 to Dec. 1, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 4 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $22 for adults and $18 for students and seniors, except for the first Sunday matinee on Nov. 24, when all tickets cost just $16.

For more information, visit outcastproductions.net.