The Counter Off-Broadway Reviews

“The Counter” laudably aims for greater spareness than those earlier plays; its best sustained moments are almost wordless. In shaping them, Cromer displays his usual directorial nerve, creating tension from time. At other points, though, his patience, which in fuller works allows feeling to emerge naturally and purely, can’t stop the story from drooping into skimpiness.

Happily, the playwright has an ideal partner in Mr. Cromer, whose flair for mining emotional depth through intimacy has helped make him one of theater’s most sought-out directors. If Ms. Kennedy’s short, melancholy slice of life would seem to offer less grist than other works he has helmed, he deftly handles the new play’s pathos and its bleak wit, and culls nuanced, moving performances from the actors.

That’s a high quality group, and The Counter fits right in. Kennedy deals in secrets and grief and escape, in running away and starting again, and most crucially in standing in front of a suddenly opened door: You either stay inside, crushed by your habitual fear and unhappiness, or bravely walk through.

Kennedy seems to be attempting something poignant and hopeful, close in tone to Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” an unlikely connection between two regular people; or perhaps even Samuel D. Hunter’s “A Case for the Existence of God,” which explores the extraordinary that exists within the sadness of the ordinary, the cosmic that can be revealed in the everyday. The production even has the right director to effect such a tone: Cromer helmed Hunter’s play Off-Broadway, and achieved something similar in the memorable 2009 Off Broadway production of “Our Town.”