John
by Annie Baker
directed by Sam Gold
Signature Theatre
July 25, 2015
Production website

NO 💉. I would rather go into rehab. Thank you very much.

I have broken a personal record: I have see the very WORST PLAY I have ever seen in NYC. The only reason that I stayed beyond the first hour and the first of two intermissions is that I wanted to see if, in some way, a play could take me from totally numb to comotose. I am one to NEVER nod off in a play – – but, oh what a relieve that would be here. AND the ironic thing is that this play (loosely used term) is by Annie Baker, the author of my favorite play of the summer, The Flick. In both plays, the playwright takes the enormous risk to take pauses – – I mean pauses – I mean pauses that Pinter could conceive and gestate an entire baby in. BUT the difference is that The Flick had people that you could actually care about. In The Flick we watched a slight movement forward as characters realized that more WAS possible. But John died by these terminal pause for several reasons: 1.) it was too damn dark – scene after scene was lit by nothing but candlelight. 2.) I hated everyone. 3.)It was too big a theatre to build a story by the slightest of facial expressions. and 4.) I hated everyone.

You get a bed and breakfast in the tourist area of the Gettysburg battle. You get an elderly caretaker of the B&B, Georgia Engel (fun to see her), you get a blind best friend who just sits around eating lady fingers and waxing on about how some man left her. Did I mention I hated everyone? You get a set with a lot of dolls. I hate those too. Then a couple comes to stay for the weekend with the petty, predictable problems of infidelity and lying. And then they talk, and then they stop talking, and then fuck it, who cares?!

A man a few rows ahead of me had an oxygen tank with him and half way into Act 2, an alarm on the tank went off as he was approaching the end of the tank. Conflict, by God, good ol’ conflict. Breathe grandpa, breath!