The Flick returns to New York

Did anybody go to the first performance last night or is planning on going during the run?

Even though I trashed the show earlier, I tried reading it again and for some reason it seriously moved me the second time I read it. Sorry for bashing it before, but it just shows you that you have to actually finish a play in order to make an assessment of it.

I'm going back to New York in the fall and I'd love to see this, though I can't imagine it would have that long of a run considering the negative audience response for the show when it played at Playwrights Horizons.

The problem for me when I first read it was that I was just glossing through it. Upon a second reading, I really paid attention. I don't think the silences are meant to be artsy, but rather just hyper-naturalistic. Annie Baker takes show don't tell to the extreme.

Not uninformed, but underdeveloped.

And I tend to wait to form an opinion until I've actually seen a show. The exception so far was The Flick; an opinion that changed when I reread it. But thanks.

Ha, you're a little too good at playing After Eight, Growl.

It was a magnificent production and experience. I saw the play later in the run, so perhaps I experienced something different from what early audiences saw, but the run time flew by and I was sorry to have to leave the company of these characters at the end.

Annie Baker is a gem and it's been too long since we've seen a new play from her.

I’ve read “The Flick,” “Circle Mirror Transformation,” “The Aliens,” and “Body Awareness.” I’ve been moved by all of them, but my two favorites are definitely “The Flick” and “Body Awareness.” I have yet to see a production of hers performed, so I am excited for this production.

Sad I will be missing “John” – hopefully a script will be published.

The seating is always reconfigured around the design of the show, but I've never seen a single bad seat in that house, no matter the show, design, or configuration. You can probably bank on any seat being fine, if not exceptional.

I read this play for the first time about a month ago. I wasn't moved by it, but I enjoyed it. I can't make it to NYC soon, but I think I'm going to see the production that they are going to put on here at Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA.

I saw a production of "The Aliens" in Colorado a few months back and I was extremely moved by that, so I'm excited to see her play come alive!

I saw this last night -- a fine and moving play populated with really first rate performances that is unfortunately hampered by a really indefensibly prolonged running time of three hours and twenty minutes. No, really. THREE HOURS AND TWENTY MINUTES. There's clearly a decision to maintain a slow, deliberate pace, and the benefit of that is some of the best writing and acting you're going to be seeing round these parts, but damn, some of those pauses just go on and on and on and on, and it ultimately just drags the play down.

As one character in the play would describe it -- you know that scene in THE SHINING in the men's room, between Jack Nicholson and the waiter Grady, where there are these long pauses between every line of dialogue? It's exactly like that, but the pauses here are even longer, you could drive a truck between some of the lines of dialogue in this play as performed last night.

I'm fine with slow-paced plays, and there's a lot to value here, and that running time will doubtless be trimmed severely. I'd say a good 45 minutes could be trimmed, entirely by having the actors just plain pick up the pace for f*ck's sake. Wait a few weeks and go.

I credit the production's commitment to those "pauses" -- even though I sort of bristle at calling them that; in the world of the characters, they're realistic silences -- because they were, for me, the aesthetic choice that gave the play its thrust, impact, and scope. It's such an intimate piece, and I think its languorousness made it feel downright epic, almost Greek tragedy-like.

Now I'm trying to remember the runtime at PH. I feel like it was closer to 3 hrs on the nose. So maybe they do need to tighten. It's a delicate balance. I'd imagine an extra 20 minutes would kill a lot of those moments in the way you're describing. Whatever the hell they were doing at PH felt just exactly right to me.