Last week, my wife and I did another Broadway blitz, flying to New York to see four new plays. This week, I offer reviews of all of them for you. I began Monday with “Yellow Face,” followed Tuesday by “The Hills Of California” and Wednesday by “Left On Tenth.” Now, here’s the fourth…
Meghan Kennedy’s “The Counter” is the shortest play I’ve ever seen. It only runs 75 minutes, which is less time than it takes for just one act of some other shows.
It stars Anthony Edwards (the second “ER” alum we saw last week) as Paul, a lonely, recovering alcoholic, retired firefighter with a Letterman-esque beard. Paul is the first customer every morning in an otherwise empty diner in a small town in upstate New York. The only other character is Katie (Susannah Flood), the waitress who banters casually with Paul (he exits and re-enters to begin each new day). Their conversations are never about anything more intimate than movies they like — which he sees in the town’s theater while she only watches Netflix.
One day, after months of this morning ritual, Paul suggests they move their relationship forward. Before Katie can turn him down, he explains he doesn’t want sex, just friendship and some tough talk. When she tentatively agrees, he suggests they begin sharing secrets to better their bond. She’s wary, especially after Paul hits her with a shocking request.
He wants her to kill him, by pouring some poison into his coffee from a bottle he hands her. He says it’s up to her when she does it: “I don’t want to know when it’s coming. The biggest surprise of my life will be the only surprise of my life.” He just wants to end the deep depression he feels constantly.
Appalled, Katie refuses, but he gets her to hold onto the bottle. Meanwhile, we learn a few things about her life, which has been far from happy after surviving a personal tragedy which brought her back to this town two years ago.
While Edwards is quite good as Paul, I found Flood’s performance even better. She gives as good as she gets while going through the motions of serving, clearing, and stacking dishes without letting those duties get in the way of the conversation. She also has a scene two thirds of the way through in which, after sharing one of her secrets, Katie breaks down and cries. We were sitting in the fourth row and I could see real tears flowing from her eyes and snot from her nose as she tried to regain her composure. I hadn’t seen any actor get that emotional in the theater before, and wondered how difficult it is for her to do it eight times a week.
It would be easy to compare “The Counter” with Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” another two-hander from 1987 about lonely people who bond in a diner. There were some remarkable pairings in that show’s cast, beginning off-Broadway with Kathy Bates/F. Murray Abraham, followed in later years by Carol Kane/Bruce Weitz (who I saw), Edie Falco/Stanley Tucci, Rosie Perez/Joe Pantoliano, and Audra MacDonald/Michael Shannon.
McNally’s play set a pretty high bar that Kennedy’s one-act can’t quite match, but I walked out of “The Counter” satisfied with the performances, the twists in the story, and even the 75-minute length.