A Pulitzer Prize-winner of two
seasons ago, Annie Baker’s The
Flick, which originated
at Playwrights Horizons, is back in its original production with its original
cast, for a sit-down engagement further downtown, at the Barrow Street
Playhouse, until January. Its title refers
to an arthouse movie theatre in Massachusetts, one of the very last hold-outs
against digital projection in favor of oldschool reel-to-reel style. Its
characters are three who maintain the theatre: Rose (Louisa Krause) who runs the projector; Sam (Mathew
Maher), the senior clean-up guy (who hopes
to run the projector one day), and the new guy. Avery (Aaron
Clifton Motes).
In
her minimalist/naturalist style, Ms. Baker is interested in painting big
personality portraits with tiny brush strokes, and so The Flick is delivered with determined, demotic detail work, in
which, say, a simple conversation about the best way to sweep up after the
audience has left, reveals hopes, dreams, depression and the essence of
workplace dynamics with the unseen boss. Under the direction of Sam Gold,
this is all very well acted, but doled out at a measured—and some would
say glacial—pace, like some kind of existentialist tone poem. Including
intermission, the progression of many scenes of varying length, clocks in at
three hours and ten minutes.
There’s
really no predicting how you’ll react to that. It’s such a deliberate and
deliberately hypnotic style choice that you either make a pact with it and take
the slow conveyor belt to the destination; or you decide it’s boring,
self-indulgent and unnecessary. The night I attended, I made said pact, and for
the most part found it an interesting theatrical experiment that was hardly
flawless, but mostly held together and proved, in the end, a unique enough
conflation of style and substance to be pleasantly memorable. But two who
accompanied me to the performance did not, alternately tolerating and dozing
through it. (The audience gestalt seems
pretty much in the play’s favor, as it would have to be, given its pedigree and
commercial foothold, but that also may reflect the concentration of a return
engagement crowd who know what they’re getting into).
Anyway,
it very much is what it is. Don’t attend expecting fireworks. This is about the
weighty world of minutiae.
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