Review - The Flick

I am shamefully late in seeing Annie Baker's The Flick.  It won the Pulitzer Prize.  LAST YEAR.  Gah.  There's really no excuse, it's just embarrassing that I've waited so long to see it.  But see it I finally did.  Last night.  And, to me, it was well worth the wait.

When the play was done originally, in 2013, it was polarizing.  Critics and many audience members loved it.  Other audience members hated it.  Reports of mass exodus during intermission became frequent.  The artistic director of the original producing company even sent out an apologetic e-mail to his subscribers (which really ticked me off, if I may digress for a moment; don't apologize for your plays!), feeling the need to explain that all theater can't be easy.  Once the play won the Pulitzer, though, things started to settle down, because...Pulitzer.  It shuts people up.  It doesn't, however, keep people from leaving at intermission (a good chunk of the mezz last night didn't return for act two; their loss).

I've had some friends tell me that since I liked John (which is the most recent play by Baker and was the first play of hers I'd seen) that I would find her playwriting methodology boring and static in The Flick, because I'd already seen it in action.  Most of my friends who liked The Flick didn't like John.  And vice versa.  But, hey, I'm a rebel.  I loved John and I loved The Flick.  I really appreciate the complete immersion into the lives of these characters, these PEOPLE.  I am completely on board with what Annie Baker is trying to do.  I love the feeling that I'm watching them live a life instead of be a character in a play.  I love the idea of character and history and self-growth (or no-self-growth) being just as important to a theatrical experience as plot and action. And this is coming from someone who considers herself a plot girl.

When you enter the Barrow Street Theatre, you see the rows of seats for the theater patrons facing the rows of movie seats that make up the stage.  The Flick takes place in a rundown movie theater in Massachusetts, one of the only theaters in the country that still uses a film projector instead of a digital process.  When the play opens, it's Avery's first day and he's being taught the ropes of cleaning the theater by Sam, a 30-something sad sack who has made his 'career' at this movie house.  The third movie theater employee that the play depicts is Rose, the projectionist.  How these three characters interact, live, respond to each other (or not respond to each other) and how they reveal themselves over the three and a half hour running time is what makes up the hypnotic atmosphere of The Flick.  Minutes go by in silence as we watch Avery and Sam sweep up the spilled popcorn and candy on the movie theater floor, but then we learn so much as they start to make small talk that builds up into major revelations.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

It's as if we're eavesdropping on real conversations, the dialogue and acting are so pitch perfect and authentic.  By what these characters say, and often don't say, we learn so much about them.  Much has been made of Baker's use of pause and silence - again, like when I saw John, I didn't take undue notice of the pauses or the silence, because I found them all filled with meaning.  I never got impatient, thinking 'oh my gosh, get on with it,' because I felt as if I could always see what was going on underneath it.  And, like life, what's underneath can be just as interesting as what's being said.

The play takes place over several weeks in the life of these theater employees, and the play structure is episodic - we see small scenes, learn more and more about the characters, then the next vignette begins.  So there's a build-up and cumulative effect to all these scenes.   Dialogue that seemed to be just throwaway lines early on turned up as pivotal moments later in the play.  I was so engrossed in how the story unspooled and was constantly surprised and pleased at the twists and turns.  And, looking back, there were many important things in the play to think about as well, like issues of class, race, education and status.  Again, just like life, seemingly small and unimportant conversations can take on major implications at a later time.

With all of this authentic dialogue came a lot of laugh-out-loud comic lines.  With such unique and idiosyncratic people (who could easily have been stereotypes, but they're written and acted with such compassion, that there are really no cliché moments), their quirky and weird ideas sometimes just made me laugh out loud.  There was also some real sadness and devastation underneath; just a lot of fullness and richness of human experience.  All in only three and a half hours!

When we got to the ending, I thought I knew how things were going to go - the last scene is really exquisitely mournful.  But I would think, 'yes, they're going to do this,'  then I would think, 'no, wait, they're going to do that.'  I must've gone back and forth a dozen times, trying to decide what would happen, which gave the most wonderful anticipation for how things would go.  But, really, I spent the entire evening in wonderful anticipation.  I just hung on every word and every pause and every silence, reveling in the lives I was peeking in on from my seat.

Speaking of my seat, I don't think I even knew Barrow Street Theatre had a mezzanine, but that's where my seat location was.  There are three rows in the mezz and I was in the third row.  Which was nice because I had the back wall to lean on.  The guy sitting next to me was sure our row wouldn't be full, so he took the opportunity to spread out.  When the gent with the seat in front of me sat down, I sort of gasped - he was a giant!  He blocked my entire view of the stage!  I looked down and noticed that a lot of seats had cushions on them - so not only was this guy a giant, but he was also sitting on a cushion to make him even taller!  I looked over at my seat neighbor and whispered, "I'm going to need to move over."  He laughed, handed me a seat cushion of my own and moved over.  He also didn't come back after intermission.  So...there's that.  The tickets say 'no late seating' on them, but people were being seated in the mezzanine throughout the first act.  And the technicians maybe went in and out of the mezz too frequently (the light that poured in when the door opened and closed kept shining into the corner of my eye), so I kinda wish I had seen the show from downstairs.  But since I enjoyed it immensely, I guess the commotion (and giant people) didn't bother me all that much.

The Flick runs until the end of January, unless they extend again, so you should definitely go.  Don't make the mistake I did.  I may try to see it again, from the main floor hopefully.  But rest assured, I will not wait so long to see the next Annie Baker play.  In fact, I can't wait for it to get here...