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Marvin's Room

by Scott McPherson

Directed by Monroe Dewberry
September 2001
The Playhouse on Main

Featuring – Pamela Buhner, Jenny Edwards, Melissa Fenwick, Jim Horton, Josh Horton, Karen Howard, Jim Sisson, Rose Sisson, and Chris Tyer

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 with which she can both control her constant pain and open and close her garage door. 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.

Click here to read the program from Marvin's Room.

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