Marvin’s Room takes its title from the space family patriarch Mavin Wakefield spends all the hours of his days, now that he’s reached the end stages of his life’s journey. He and his sister Ruth are tended to by his eldest daughter, Bessie. They’re the unchosen family who chose to remain together. In Ohio, Marvin’s youngest daughter, Lee, is struggling to raise two teenage sons alone - Charlie, a bookworm who’s failing out of school, and Hank, current resident of a detention facility, put there after attempting to burn down the family home. When Bessie is diagnosed with leukemia, she and Lee are forced to reconnect. Might Lee or one of her sons be a match for Bessie’s needed bone marrow transplant? What’s to become of Marvin and Ruth if not? While its themes are tinged with sadness, Marvin’s Room is laugh-out-loud funny and oh-so-wise about how each of us persists - in families we didn’t choose, in bodies that betray us, in lives we don’t recognize, and in the face of each of life’s little and not-so-little indignities and disappointments.

Old Library Theatre (OLT), Fair Lawn Recreation Department’s resident theatre company, is a community theatre organization located in Bergen County, NJ. We want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Lenape, the indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. 

Old Library Theatre was started in 1967 in Fair Lawn by a handful of dreamers who wanted to make the joy of theatre performance available to everyone. The original theatre was on River Road, but the company relocated to the George Frey Center for Performing Arts in the Fair Lawn Community Center in 2006. Now in our 55th season, we aim to continue the tradition of providing quality community entertainment at an affordable cost.