The beauty of Baker’s play lies in its portrait of three quietly desperate people. I can vouch for the veracity of this element: as a student, I worked as a cinema usher and was roped into exactly the same, marginally criminal practice. The plot also hinges on Avery’s reluctant involvement in a scam concerning the resale of unused ticket stubs. Sam’s desire to learn the projectionist’s trade is a sign of his unfulfilled longings. Avery’s encyclopedic cinematic knowledge, which enables him to work out the six degrees of separation between Michael J Fox and Britney Spears, is a symbol of a profound depression. Movies and cinema are central to the narrative they work to reveal character, too. Among many other things, the play offers a passionate defence of films shot, in the digital age, on 35mm stock. The third figure in this exquisite triangle is Rose, the projectionist in one of the few cinemas yet to switch to the digital process. He is joined this particular summer by Avery, a 20-year-old African American on a break from his studies at a college where his dad teaches semiotics. Sam is a burly 35-year-old whose job is to clear the debris from the auditorium and supervise the toilets.
The three main characters work in the cinema.
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In this play, her setting is a small movie house in Massachusetts: the audience is in the position of the screen, confronted by rows of empty seats and a projection booth. The two previous Baker plays seen in Britain, The Aliens and Circle, Mirror, Transformation, both dealt with enclosed worlds. By the simple act of not demanding our attention, however, Baker rivetingly compels it. I should say straight off that this is a quiet play that slowly unfolds its meaning over three and a quarter hours. This astonishing play by the US playwright Annie Baker is in the same tradition, in that it shows how work can be a way in to exploring human relationships as well as social and ethical issues. Arnold Wesker in The Kitchen introduced us to the idea that work was inherently dramatic.
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