Rooms With A View

I love theater, especially the big brash Broadway musicals, but I also like seeing smaller productions. I recently went to see a two person show called Rooms: A Rock Romance. Set in proto-punk Scotland and New York, an ambitious singer meets a reclusive guitarist and the join up to take the music world by storm. But other things happen along the way. The show is part Once, part They're Singing Our Song, and just a dollop of A Star Is Born.

It's those other things that make up the quick-paced (eighty minutes with no intermission) show. The tongue-in-cheek punk rock numbers are hilarious and spot-on.

The show is being presented at MetroStage, a big warehouse looking space at the edge of Alexandria. Any further north and it would be part of the power plant. The space itself is just perfect for intimate shows like this. I was surprised that the Saturday matinee we saw (if 5 pm can be called a matinee) wasn't fuller, because the show has been getting great reviews.

The show has an off-off-Broadway history and I kept wondering how it would do in a bigger venue. I'd hate to see the great rapport between the actors get lost in a bigger place or see the show padded out to a longer playing time. The size and pace of this fast, furious, funny musical is just perfect.

It plays a few more weeks in DC and then moves onto Rochester in upstate New York with the same cast and band, so it's definitely a room worth a view.