Westhampton Beach High School debuts Marvin's Room"

Alana Mercurio tried not to slip out of character as she stumbled over her words during a rehearsal of the Westhampton Beach High School fall play “Marvin’s Room” last week.

“Line?” she asked.

Rachel Lucas, the multi-tasking stage manager, began reading Alana her line when Alana, as the estranged sister, Lee, cut her off and carried off the rest of the scene seamlessly.

For Alana, a 16-year-old junior at Westhampton Beach High School, the role of Lee in “Marvin’s Room,” which opens on Friday night in the Westhampton Beach High School auditorium, has been a challenge—it’s her first speaking role in a high school play. But it has also been fun.

“She’s a complex character in so many ways,” Alana said between bites of chicken parmesan during a dinner break at a rehearsal last week. “It’s a really fun role. I’m really glad I got it.”

For the last two weeks, the cast and crew of about 20 high school students have been rehearsing “Marvin’s Room” for six hours a day, five days a week. The play opens Friday, November 6, at 7:30 p.m. and will continue through the weekend, playing Saturday, November 7, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 8, at 2 p.m.

“It’s coming down to the wire,” said Alexa Keegan last week. The 17-year-old senior plays Bessie, the self-sacrificing sister in the play.

“Marvin’s Room,” a story about mending broken family relationships, was written by Scott McPherson in 1989 and performed the same year at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Two years later, it was produced at the Playwright’s Theatre in New York City. It was later turned into a film, starring Meryl Streep as Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio as Lee’s troubled son Hank and Diane Keaton as Bessie.

“The fragile, broken relationships start to really come together through confrontation,” said Rosemary Terchun-Cline, the director of the Westhampton Beach High Schools rendition of “Marvin’s Room.”

The play is about Bessie, who lives in Florida and cares for her ailing aunt Ruth and her father, Marvin, who has been bedridden for years. At the start of the play she learns she has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. While she seems to be in remission, Bessie calls her estranged sister Lee, who lives in Ohio, and asks if she and her two sons will get tested to see if they are a match for donating bone marrow.

Lee, “who has made every wrong decision in life regarding men,” Ms. Terchun-Cline said, agrees to make the drive from Ohio to Florida. She takes her two sons, bookworm Charlie and rebel Hank, who has been locked up in an institution after burning down his house.

“He’s completely unruly and dangerously violent,” Ms. Terchun-Cline said.

As the family members deal with the prospect of being tested, there are signs of hope for some repair of the damaged family relationships.

“It really shows the importance of family,” Alana said.

Ms. Terchun-Cline said the 10 high school students in the cast have enthusiastically taken up the roles of the characters even though they may not fully grasp the depth of those characters’ life experiences.

“Most of the characters are at least 40 years old,” she said, noting that the student actors “haven’t reached that chronological or emotional age. It’s really fun to teach them.”

The cast members agreed that the characters they are playing are not like anything they’ve done before.

“It’s definitely the most challenging role I’ve had,” said Vincent Cinque, a 16-year-old junior who plays the rebellious Hank. “He’s fun, he’s so complex.”

Vincent has performed in other high school plays and in Hampton Theatre Company productions in Quogue.

Alexis, who has also been involved in the theater community, explained that Bessie, though a hermit, is really much deeper than she appears to be.

“She’s lived most of her life alone with two people,” she said. “You don’t realize at first how much of a character she is.”

“Marvin’s Room” was selected for production at the suggestion of Linda Howard, who retired last year as the high school’s music teacher and theater director, according to Ms. Terchun-Cline, who does not work at Westhampton Beach High School. When she accepted the directing assignment, she turned to the veteran director for some suggestions.

“She said, ‘Well, I always wanted to do ‘Marvin’s Room,’” Ms. Terchun-Cline recalled, conceding that she was enthusiastic about taking it on. “I love this show,” she said.

The playwright, Scott McPherson, knows how to “show the bare bones of human frailties and failures” in physical health and in familial relationships, the director said.

“You get a really gruesome side, but then it creates a really funny moment,” she said.

Alexa also praised Mr. McPherson’s writing in “Marvin’s Room,” saying that it meshes comedy with real drama.

“You have this really funny moment and a real tear-jerking moment,” she said. “The audience doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.”

Vincent agreed with Alexa’s and Ms. Terchun-Cline’s interpretations of the play.

“It’s a really beautiful play,” he said, noting that he first saw the movie when he was in middle school.

If the actors do it right, the audience will be able to identify with the characters, recognizing a “truth-telling” depiction of family: “They see themselves,” the director said.

The cast members, who said they are enjoying the hard work they are putting into the play together, have formed a new bond with each other, between eating, rehearsing and “freaking out about homework together,” as Alexa put it.

Ms. Terchun-Cline, who until now has worked only with adults during her 25 years as an actor and director, described the group as a “dream team.”

“They all know each other so well and work so well together,” she said. “They are a really enthusiastic and dedicated group of kids. I’m delighted to do this; I’m loving it.”

Even though the rehearsals can be draining, the student actors are confident that their staging of “Marvin’s Room” will be a success, thanks to their hard work and the director’s dedication.

“We couldn’t have done it without Ms. Cline,” Vincent said.