New York Review: THE FLICK
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
But how does she do it? How does Annie Baker's The Flick mesmerize us when nothing seems to be happening, and rivet our attention when nobody seems to be saying anything particularly important? Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Flick is Baker's latest in her starry, off-Broadway career, as she once again collaborates with the director Sam Gold; together they are astounding.
With the same quiet, subtle, sympathetic, heartbreaking insight they brought to Baker's adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya several years ago, she illuminates the lives of three unhappy, dreary people played by the same fine actors reassembled for this Barrow Street Theatre production: brave, luckless, humiliated Sam (Matthew Maher whose blue eyes seem to act independently of his face), young, smart, morose, depressive Avery (Aaron Clifton Moten) and defiantly messy, disconnected Rose (Louisa Krause) all work in a small, decrepit movie house in Worcester County, Massachusetts. They sweep scattered popcorn off the floor and mop up spilled soda. They reveal, in a few tender moments, the sad facts of their lives: suicide attempt, unrequited love, paying off $20,000 in student loans working an $8.25/hour job. In other words, Baker suggests, the usual.
They all suffer from a kind of existential angst, the feeling that life as they live it is inauthentic, that they are all trapped in some banal sit-com, and, paradoxically, suffer the feeling that whatever they're doing, "I'd rather be watching a movie."
Avery is a purist, obsessed with film (as opposed to digital) and he and Sam play a 6-degrees-of-separation game that follows actors from one movie to another. The Flick, the name of the single-screen theatre they work in, is one of the few surviving houses that still requires a 35 mm projectionist, as technology threatens the future of genuine film: the art of light and shadow, photographs separated by darkness.
And that is an apt description of the cinematic structure of this drama, where scenes are separated by blackouts, and people often remain stock still. The emphasis is on visual image, not dialogue; film, as Edward Albee has said, hates words, and theatre loves them. The pauses here are of astonishing length—Pinter, in his wildest dreams, never risked this.
It is a rare play that is written with movie buffs in mind: scenes start and end with music that, if you know your stuff (as Baker obviously does and as I do not) you get the allusion to the famous film. And just wait for the "Ezekial 25.17" rant from Pulp Fiction.
Like most good ensemble shows, each actor gets a chance to shine: Rose's dance is jaw-dropping, Sam's declaration of love to Rose is excruciating, and Avery's one-sided conversation with, I assume, his psychiatrist is a masterpiece of the understated.
I am enchanted and mystified by this long, long, fine, fine play that refuses to pander to either our need for sentimental reassurances or our impatience. 3¼ hours seems just right.
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Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St, NYC. Information: www.Smarttix.com or 212-868-4444.