Brianna GallagherAMS 214- Live on BroadwaySullivan The Flick Review7-24-15

The Flick is a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic play by Annie Baker. The Flick

details the lives of three workers, who live complicated lives outside their repetitive jobs.

The show originally opened at Playwrights Horizons in 2013 and was revived in 2015 at

the Barrow Street Theatre. I always try to be fair and try to find the positive in

everything, but I am finding that to be incredibly difficult for this review. Without a

doubt in my mind, this was the worst theatrical experience in my entire life. As I am

writing this I still find it incredibly hard to not be a “black hole” of negativity. There are

honestly so many problems with this show; I don’t know where to begin.

After a somewhat promising opening (well at least the first two minutes seemed

promising) things quickly went downhill. While I did think the use of the projector was

an innovative way to transition from scene to scene, it became really old, really fast. I am

not sure if the blinding lights were meant to shock the audience or prevent them from

falling asleep, and honestly I don’t care. I became especially perturbed when the

transition music played. It wasn’t that the music was bad; actually it was quite the

opposite. Music from classics such as Mary Poppins and more modern hits like Marvel’s

The Avengers played in sync with the light transitions (I also question whether Disney is

getting royalties or even gave the okay to use the music). What annoyed me was that the

music is from works that I would rather watch than The Flick, almost as if I am being

mocked. While I do think a movie theater is an interesting setting and get the idea of the

audience being the screen, the idea of a show within a show isn’t very original. Also as

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someone who is quite familiar with the roving bucket, the actors perfectly captured the

marriage between broom and bucket. The actors even capture the vacant stare and

repetitive nature of sweeping. The reality is, that wasn’t acting it was someone sweeping,

the buckets didn’t represent some deeper meaning, no, it was just a time killer. I

understand that Off-Broadway shows have nowhere near the budget of Broadway shows,

but compared to spectacular sets from shows of Off-Broadway origins such as Avenue Q

and Rent, this really falls short. However, on a positive note, the Barrow Street Theatre

was a little cramped, but I felt was appropriate for the tone of the production (or at least

what they were attempting). Like the Flick Theater, it was a bit rundown, and to mildly

paraphrase a line from the show, the theatre “had potential.”

This play went from mediocre to downright atrocious. This production breaks

every single traditional play performance convention, and while that was the idea, that

idea just fails so miserably. Annie Baker clearly has no idea how to write dialogue for the

millennial generation or even understands much about it. I have gotten more insightful

information and cultural understanding of “my generation” from a Buzzfeed article than

from this play and the article only took five minutes to read. To be honest I have held

pieces of paper that were more edgy than what this play claims to be. Just because it

drops harsh language, does not make it more adult, in my opinion it makes it look

childish. I don’t suggest sanitizing language (I am guilty of the occasional swearing

myself), but the more you use it, the less impactful it becomes. At the end of the day, the

insults and language comes off nothing more than middle school gym banter. I

understand the “nuances” the production was going for, but the execution (which was

further impeded by some of the worst dialogue I have ever heard in my life) was poor and

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did not come through at all. If critics continue to believe that she is the “new voice of

theatre” then I am very fearful for the future of theatre.

As I tried to comprehend why on earth so many people are in love with this show,

I began to wonder if maybe I just didn’t get it. Then, it finally hit me. The Flick is Rent,

well Rent minus the heart and soul. I am not saying that The Flick is ripping off Rent, but

some of the resemblances are uncanny. A leading character, who is obsessed with film

trying to protect the arts in a changing world. That sounds an awful lot like Mark from

Rent. The female lead is a party girl with a complicated personality, who is almost

immediately attracted to the male lead. That seems to echo Mimi from Rent. A leading

character magically gets over a life threating illness…I really can go on all day with this.

The Flick, like Rent, also doesn’t have so much of a “plot” in the traditional sense, but

rather a series of events that form a more surrealist experience on the stage. The reason

why Rent works is because you actually care about the characters and wonder what will

happen next in their lives. In The Flick, the polar opposite occurs. These characters are so

one-dimensional and cliché that I don’t think I would flinch an inch if an asteroid hit

them point blank. I actually feel kind of bad for the actors, because they literally have

nothing to work with. Unless you are a master of improv, I don’t see how any actor could

have really done any better with the material given to them. I think out of all of the actors

Matthew Maher really, really tried to make this show work. I could somewhat empathize

with the character of Sam and his struggles throughout the show. I believe that really

makes a huge statement on the quality of Maher’s acting abilities that he was able to get

anything from that script. I think critics are so desperate for “the Rent or Hair for the

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millennial generation” that they are willing to applaud the first thing that remotely has a

similar premise.

With the unnecessarily long runtime (so much so that my mother called to see if I

was alright), adolescent dialogue, and cardboard cutout characters, The Flick tries to be a

blockbuster, when in reality it’s a movie made by a preschooler on his mother’s iPhone.

While I have not watched any other of Baker’s plays, if they are anything similar to The

Flick, then I think I will save my money.

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