Review: The Counter Is the Dramatic Equivalent of Decaf Coffee

With whom do you share you deepest, darkest secrets? Your spouse? Your priest? The server at your local coffee shop?

Paul (Anthony Edwards) has opted for the latter in Meghan Kennedy’s The Counter, which is now making its world premiere with Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre. Katie (Susannah Flood) is his confessor, listening intently as Paul discusses his chronic sleep woes and dishes out impertinent observations: “…seems like you wash your hair on Mondays and Thursdays,” he tells her, “I can smell it when you pour my coffee and it transports me to a field of wildflowers and hay.” Is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship or Baby Reindeer transposed to Upstate New York?

As I watched Kennedy’s play (her latest at Roundabout since 2017’s Napoli, Brooklyn) I was keenly aware that while Paul could always walk away from the counter, Katie was stuck there until the end of her shift — a fact that anyone who has ever worked a service job will also recognize. I thought, I hope he’s tipping her well.

But a sensitive, tightrope-walking performance by Flood makes it clear that Katie is never in any real danger and actually enjoys Paul, even when he suggests they take their server-customer relationship to the next level. “What if we decide to become friends,” he suggests, with the insistence of a cult recruiter, “Real friends. Like we tell each other secrets. And we help each other sort through things. And give each other tough talk. What if we tried that?”

“… …Okay,” she responds. It’s consent, but not exactly enthusiastic. She avails herself of his ready ear, telling him about the relationship she fled in New York City, and how she still has 27 saved voicemails from one man in her phone. Then Paul ups the ante by handing her a vial of poison and asking her to drop it in his coffee one day, but not to warn him when she does.

Kennedy clearly has something to say about the manifest destiny of consumer capitalism — how every social interaction now seems like an imposition if it is not accompanied by a commensurate financial transaction. There’s a kind of tyranny in that way of viewing the world, carrying with it the potential to spoil otherwise rewarding human relationships: What are friends but pro bono amateur therapists? And for a guy like Paul, whom Edwards endows with a grating know-it-all confidence that has surely scared away everyone else in his life, this coffee shop may be the best marketplace to find one.

The appearance of Dr. Peg Bradley (Amy Warren, making a sketch of a character a three-dimensional human), with whom Paul once had an affair, does little to illuminate the life he seems so intent on ending. Lighting designer Stacey Derosier does some dramaturgical heavy lifting by literally illuminating the two characters in a quasi-religious glow as they share a brief caress. It’s gorgeous and undeniably heavy-handed.

Director David Cromer has always understood lighting better than any of his peers working in New York, but even his wizardry cannot resuscitate this undernourished script. However, he does give The Counter first-rate production values, with an appropriately cramped and detailed set by Walt Spangler. The morning sun forces its way through the frost-covered glass, the gentle sound of birds penetrating this beige sanctuary (sound design by Christopher Darbassie). Sarah Laux’s costumes offer an immediate sense of place, with Paul’s blue and green puffy jacket indicating a preference for utility and comfort over fashion. It’s ugly as sin, but it protects him from the unrelenting chill.

A tale of social atomization in Upstate New York, The Counter feels like a companion to Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, which played Roundabout last year and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  It’s also a bit of a comedown from that unforgettable play, posing deep ethical questions and conjuring rich dramatic quagmires before ending somewhat abruptly with none of those threads tied up (you can always tell when the audience hesitates to clap at the end, as if expecting more). That’s true to life, I suppose, but at just 75 minutes, The Counter feels like the first act of a much longer work — that, or a really long commercial for antidepressants.