All the times Mia Farrow did theatre
The Golden Globe- and BAFTA-nominated actress returns to Broadway for the first time since 2014 in the comedy play The Roommate opposite Patti LuPone.
Mia Farrow returns to Broadway for the first time in a decade to star alongside Patti LuPone in The Roommate, a play about middle-aged women sharing a house and everything life throws at them.
Written by Broadway-debut playwright Jen Silverman (Spain, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties), the two-character comedy is directed by Jack O’Brien, fresh from receiving his Lifetime Achievement Tony Award earlier this year.
Farrow, a star since the 1960s, has continually impressed on screen with signature sensitivity and urgency in everything from Peyton Place and Rosemary’s Baby to Alice and The Purple Rose of Cairo. Farrow has also had a varied career on stage — learn more about her most noteworthy theatre credits before seeing her latest play this fall, and be sure to check out our roundup of our favorite Patti LuPone theatre roles.
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Farrow made her stage debut in 1963 as the youthful and innocent Cecily Cardew in this Off-Broadway production of Oscar Wilde’s classic play. A year later, she landed her breakthrough role of Alison McKenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place.
Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher
Farrow, the daughter of Oscar-winning writer and director John Farrow and actress Maureen O'Sullivan, starred as Joan of Arc in this 1971 staging at the Royal Albert Hall in London – and made history while she was at it. She became the first American actress in history to join the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Mary Rose
Throughout the ‘70s, Farrow acted on stage in London. She played the title character, who disappears twice – first as a girl, and later as an adult — in this 1972 revival of the play by Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie.
Three Sisters
As the youngest sibling, Irina, Farrow was the face of hope – and what becomes of it – in this 1973 production of Anton Chekhov’s play about the lives, dreams, and disillusionments of three rural Russian sisters longing to return to Moscow.
Sibling drama and unfulfilled aspirations are faintly echoed in Hannah and Her Sisters, a 1986 movie Farrow starred in.
The House of Bernarda Alba
Vulnerable women are firmly in Farrow’s acting wheelhouse. Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba follows a domineering widow who imposes strict control over her five daughters. In 1973, Farrow played the youngest daughter, Adela, whose passion and defiance seal her tragic fate.
The Marrying of Ann Leete
Farrow played the title role in this 1975 Royal Shakespeare Company staging of Harley Granville-Barker’s pointed comedy set about 200 years earlier. In it, a politician seeks to use his daughter’s wedding to boost his career.
The Zykovs
Maxim Gorky’s drama explores the rift between generations – and genders – on the cusp of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In this 1976 RSC production, Farrow played the convent-raised Pavla, whose frankness leads to disruption.
Ivanov
The title character of Chekhov’s drama is a landowner in emotional and financial straits. In this 1976 RSC production, Farrow played the idealistic Sasha, who believes she can save him from his despair and disillusionment. Spoiler: She can’t.
Romantic Comedy
Farrow made her Broadway debut in 1980 opposite Anthony Perkins (in a lighter mode than Psycho) in this Bernard Slade comedy about playwrights whose professional collaboration reverberates in various ways over time. The New York magazine review applauded Farrow’s “fine flickers.”
Getting Away With Murder
After Stephen Sondheim and George Furth created Merrily We Roll Along, they wrote this comedy about a hotshot New York psychiatrist and his group therapy patients. Directed by Jack O’Brien, the play ran just 17 performances. Farrow was heard but not seen in an uncredited role: the voice of the shrink’s answering service.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In this 1999 one-night benefit reading of Edward Albee’s award-winning 1962 play on Broadway, Farrow played the hapless Honey opposite Matthew Broderick as her professor husband, Nick. Playing George and Martha, their hosts for a night of drunken and disastrous game-playing, were Jonathan Pryce and Uta Hagen, the original Martha. Farrow reprised her role in a reading the next year in Los Angeles.
The Exonerated
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s docu-play details the true stories of wrongfully convicted death row inmates. Farrow, an activist as well as an actress, played inmate Sunny Jacobs during the show’s Off-Broadway premiere in 2002. The Exonerated featured a rotating cast of actors during its two-year run.
Fran’s Bed
Farrow played a woman on life support as the title character in James Lapine’s dramedy, seen at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven in 2003 and off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2005. Fragments of Fran’s past emerge as her family gathers around her hospital bed.
“Farrow infuses charm and depth into a play sorely needing both,” reads the Hollywood Reporter review.
Love Letters
In 2014 on Broadway, Farrow starred alongside Brian Dennehy in A.R. Gurney’s play told through decades of letters exchanged between childhood friends. The correspondence reveals the deep bond and unrequited love between them, spanning a lifetime of shared emotions and experiences.
“Mia Farrow is delicious as Melissa at all ages,” reads the New York Theatre Guide review.
The Roommate
In Jen Silverman’s two-hander, Iowa divorcée Sharon takes in a mysterious roomie, Robyn, who needs a refuge and a chance to start over. Transformations and unexpected events unfold over time. The production at the Booth Theatre marks a reunion for director Jack O’Brien and Farrow, who this time appears in the flesh – not just in voice.
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