Stage Door News

Toronto: “The Flick” has been held over to November 2

Friday, October 11, 2019

Following an electrifying opening night last night, with reviews beginning to trickle in, Outside the March and Crow's Theatre are pleased to announce they are extending the run of their production of Annie Baker's THE FLICK by a week and the show will now be on stage to November 2nd. 

THE FLICK is playwright Annie Baker’s 2014 Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork, following three ushers navigating life making $8.25/hour, as they attend to the last 35mm film projector in town. Hailed by The Guardian as “a love letter to the theatre”, THE FLICK is a hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. The play, which was first produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2013, also considers the human costs of major cultural and technological shifts, through the experiences of its three everyman characters.
 
THE FLICK is a play that lives in that gap between the mundane reality of our lives and those tantalizing, teasing cinematic flickers we all get about how things could have been,” says Outside the March Artistic Director Mitchell Cushman. “We all think our lives will play out like movies playing up on the silver screen, but instead, we’re sweeping up the popcorn between shows. It’s oh so isolating, and Annie Baker understands that millennial isolation better than anybody writing today. In THE FLICKBaker sets her gaze on the movie theatre—a space where community is bred in comfortable silence. But of course, in our world of personal devices and online streaming, that space is slowly fading away. Except it hasn’t. Through her exceptional craft, Baker’s writing floors us with a catharsis only possible when we all gather together to watch something. It takes a special writer to—while chronicling the decline of the collective experience—succeed in re-igniting its irreplaceable necessity.”
 
For this production, Cushman and his award-winning team have transformed Streetcar Crowsnest into a classic cinema, including a take-over of the lobby, incorporating artifacts from the final days of analogue culture into the immersive design for the show including banks of seats from Toronto’s historic Humber Theatre (one of the original five Odeon picture houses built in 1948) which screened its last film this past May.
The production stars Colin Doyle (6th Man Collective’s Monday Nights), Amy Keating(Stratford Festival’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night), and Brendan McMurtry-Howlett(Shakespeare in the Ruff’s Romeo and Juliet) and exciting new talent, Durae McFarlane. 

Anahita Dehbonehie designed the lobby installation and costumes, set and lighting design are by Nick Blais, projection design is by Nick Bottomley, and music and sound design is by Richard Feren.  Dehbonehie was the recipient of two Dora Awards this year for Outstanding Scenic Design for Coal Mine Theatre’s Hand to God and Puzzle Piece’s The Little Prince.  Nick Blais was awarded Outstanding Scenic Design the previous year for Outside the March and The Company Theatre multi-Dora winning production of Jerusalem.  This design dream team also recently collaborated on OtM’s innovative and acclaimed immersive escape room THE TAPE ESCAPE.
 
THE FLICK runs October 6 – November 2 at Streetcar Crowsnest (345 Carlaw Avenue) in the Guloien Theatre. Performances are scheduled Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30pm, with 2:00pm matinees on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays beginning October 12.

For tickets, visit www.crowstheatre.com.

Photo: Amy Keating as Rose and Durae McFarlane as Avery. © 2019 Dahia Katz.