So I saw Annie Baker's "The Flick" at the Barrow Street Theatre last week and, as usual when I see one of her plays ("Circle Mirror Transformation" at Playwrites Horizons, her translation of "Uncle Vanya"at the Soho Rep), had the satisfaction of seeing exceptional theatre. The play takes place in a Massachusettes movie theatre where three employees cycle between taking tickets, selling concessions, working the projector and, for the time they are on stage, cleaning the theatre.
Rose, Sam and Avery are a sad-sacky bunch. Rose, played by Louise Krause, seems at first like a disaffected punk, all snarky and dark-humored. Matthew Mayher's Sam is in his mid-thirties has no direction in life beyond pride in his current menial job. Avery, the very fine young actor Aaron Clifton Moren, is a black college student and son of a university professer, whose psychological problems have caused him to take a hiatis from school. As a film nut with a seemingly endless store of movie trivia on tap, he propels the action of the play forward. Slowly, the characters reveal more about themselves and begin to connect as they metaphorically dance around each other.
This is one of the last remaining movie theatres in Massachusettes that actually show films on celluloid which is what has attracted Avery to work here, sweeping popcorn off the floor and scraping gum off seats. But the new owner plans to digitilize and Avery will be left rudderless once more. Small dramas are played out over the course of the three plus hours but the play is really about so much: race, class, love, longing, loss and the inevitable march of time.
"The Flick" is three hours long and the theatre is small and not air-conditioned. During much of the play there is silence on stage and what dialogue there is often fragmented as in real life. The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood makes a point in his review of saying that the play is difficult to sit through for some people; both times he saw it there were people who either walked out during the play or left at intermission. I only wish that the enormously tall, wide and fidgety man sitting in front of me had done so.
