Two Spoon’s musical adaptation of The Room is in every sense a parody. The story is summarised and lampooned at every opportunity. The worst crimes of the script are retained, surrounded by self-aware dialog that raises the questions and disbelief anyone who has watched The Room will recognise.
Set in San Francisco, but for some reason badly green-screened in LA, The Room’s diegesis meanders around central character Tommy (ego, much?), his “future wife” Lisa, “best friend” Mark, “almost surrogate child” Denny and a number of other people who come and go for almost no reason. Lisa and Mark are having an affair whilst Denny is in love with Lisa but too involved in an unexplained drug problem for anyone to really care much. Set against a backdrop of framed photos of plastic spoons and the desire to play American football at the most inappropriate moments, The Room is indeed a strange and curious film.
Two Spoon’s musical adaptation of The Room is in every sense a parody. The story is summarised and lampooned at every opportunity. The worst crimes of the script are retained, surrounded by self-aware dialog that raises the questions and disbelief anyone who has watched The Room will recognise. The musical numbers are, to be fair, unsophisticated and mostly serve to poke more fun at the characters. Songs like Tommy’s Such A Great Guy, Sexy Red Dress and What Kind Of Drugs? aren’t likely to top the cast recordings chart anytime soon, but in context they are pretty funny.
Acting wise, it’s all very much over the top. I didn’t manage to grab a cast list, but respect to the actor playing Denny for the Peter Lorre inspired charactisation, and Lisa’s mother for simply stealing every scene she stumbled into.
Because of the source material, I’d venture the overacting, scene changes and unexplained directorial decisions are probably permissible. In any other show, the slapdash amateur theatrics would be inexcusable; here they seem ‘right’. But only just barely.
As a fan of the film, I get this show – but in reality it’s a massive ‘in joke’ that those without some prior knowledge will struggle to get. For them it will look like a bunch of students jumping around the stage with a poor script, terrible delivery and zero stagecraft. So for that reason it’s difficult to rate this. If you’re a fan, you’ll love it; if you’re a Room Virgin, you’ll wonder what the hell is going on. Spoon!
