Trinity Rep’s latest production, The Roommate, offers a sharply observed portrait of two women whose unlikely connection becomes a catalyst for reinvention. The play’s humor and heart lands with precision, thanks to two exceptional performances and Curt Columbus’s deft direction in his first outing as a freelance director after two decades at the helm of the company.
At its core, The Roommate speaks directly to the cultural moment. Identity today is no longer a simple biography; it’s a curated presentation, a personal brand, a digital elevator pitch. The play captures the awkwardness—and the vulnerability—of trying to explain yourself to someone new, especially when you’re still figuring out who you are.
Sharon, played with luminous sincerity by Kortney Adams, is a 55-year-old divorcée living in Iowa whose world has grown small through years of emotional repression. Her social life consists of a book club and occasional phone calls with her son in New York. Hoping to fill the void left by her divorce, she advertises for a roommate.
Enter Robyn, portrayed with multidimensional complexity by Jackie Davis. A vegan, a plant enthusiast, and a woman who manages her anxieties with herbal remedies, Robyn arrives from New York carrying more than just luggage. Sharon is immediately charmed, telling her son that Robyn seems “healthy,” a word she repeats with a quietly superstitious kind of hope.
As the women settle into their new arrangement, their differences become both friction and fuel. Sharon, ever the people-pleaser, prepares a vegetarian dinner to impress her new roommate. But in a moment of innocent snooping, searching for a vegetable peeler, she stumbles upon evidence of Robyn’s shadowy past. What begins as curiosity quickly becomes fascination, and Sharon’s long-suppressed desire for transformation surfaces with surprising force.
Robyn resists becoming a mentor in mischief, but Sharon’s persistence wears her down. What follows is a darkly comic unraveling as Sharon discovers a talent for deception she never knew she possessed. The moral boundaries between the two women blurs, then dissolves, leading to a rupture that feels both inevitable and deeply human.
The brilliance of this production lies not only in the script’s wit but in the way Adams and Davis inhabit the emotional terrain between comedy and pain. Their physicality—the small gestures, the shifting rhythms, the delicate dance of trust and tension—reveals as much as the dialogue. Columbus’ direction shapes these performances with a light but confident hand, allowing humor to bloom without sacrificing the play’s emotional stakes.
The Roommate ultimately becomes a meditation on how our histories, habits, and hidden longings spill into the lives of others. We all carry baggage, and when we share space (literal or emotional), that baggage inevitably gets unpacked, mixed, and muddled. The play asks what happens when that mixing leads not to connection but to the erosion of values we thought were fixed.
The antics that unfold are too delightful to spoil, but suffice it to say the production delivers laughter, surprise, and moments of startling tenderness. Most of all, it offers two richly drawn characters brought to life by actors whose chemistry and craft make this story resonate long after the final blackout.
With Adams and Davis at the center and Columbus guiding the arc with seasoned insight, The Roommate becomes more than a comedy about mismatched housemates. It becomes a story about second acts, self-invention, and the complicated ways we change each other; sometimes for better, sometimes not.
The Roommate runs through March 19, 2026. It will run in a rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, which plays through March 22, 2026. For more information, visit Trinity Rep’s website here.
Judith Clinton is a playwright, producer and author, whose work explores myth, and transformation. Her plays and stories reflect her belief that storytelling can both heal and ignite change. She is Co-Executive Director of the Rhode Island Theatre Makers Roundtable ritheatremakersroundtable.com.
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