In The Counter, now at Roundabout Theater Company’s Laura Pels space, playwright Meghan Kennedy, director David Cromer and a loving, small cast have breathed new life into a reliable trope. In an upstate New York diner (beautifully designed with realistic detail by Walt Spangler) two lonely souls reach out to each other. How many times have we heard that one before? But the author, Anthony Edwards as misanthropic regular customer Paul and Susannah Flood as empathic waitress Katie cook up a satisfying meal of comfort food.
Amy Warren completes the cast as Peg, a prickly doctor and former love of Paul. She is able to express decades of attachment with a single touch on Paul’s winter coat. Cromer’s spare staging and the cast’s layered acting staging imparts the heartache and loneliness of these everyday people with final gestures and actions. When Peg brushes against Paul and when Paul crosses to the other side of the counter into Katie’s territory, the impact of these seemingly insignificant moments is devastating.
There are one or two caveats. The melodramatic twist that propels the plot is more than a smidgen hokey. Also, Katie appears to be the only employee of the diner (where’s the cook?) and Paul its sole patron, apart from a brief visit from Peg. But these are minor quibbles. The Counter is brief and powerful, like a well-crafted short story.
