The Flick

In a movie theater near Worcester, MA (called The Flick) -- one of the few that hasn't yet switched to digital film -- three employees work dreary jobs for just above minimum wage: selling tickets, cleaning up after patrons, and running the projector. The economy is depressed and so are they, and yet over the course of this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Sam, Rose, and Avery show themselves to be complex, feeling people with unrealized ambitions to become more than their dreary surroundings. Annie Baker's drama unfolds in unhurried naturalistic scenes (much to the frustration of some early audiences at the New York premiere), and her astonishingly well observed and subtle characterizations suggest a Chekhovian ability to forge compelling drama from the littleness of everyday life.