At first impressions when looking at the stage setup, I initially thought that the story would be a typical romance story of a man falling in love with a woman at a cafe counter. There was no reason to think of creating a story that mainly had two characters except for a love story, as there weren’t many side characters present to demonstrate other possible theater genres. I would later realize that the story is more than just a romance story, but rather follows the theme of friendship. This is an underrated genre that I feel many plays, TV shows, and movies don’t do a fantastic job of doing through their similar framework of friendship storytelling. When watching “The Counter”, however, I came to realize that my initial thinking of the play was entirely false.
Despite not admitting to it, Paul had undergone many rough periods of his life after having broken up with his true love at high school, developing PTSD from his firefighter career, and even having seen his loved ones at their deathbeds being mistreated by the staff at their nursing homes. Katie experienced a different kind of suffering that involved imposter syndrome through failing to contact her once true love and undergoing many surgical procedures that had her uterus removed. Paul, however, managed to share these experiences amongst himself and Katie by saying aloud, “Let’s be friends! Yes, the type of friends that share their secrets and talk about experiences they would never share with anyone else.” As a person who had many friends who sympathized with me during my stressful challenges in high school, I thus heavily related to Paul and Katie’s friendship and grew very content when seeing their friendship developing into one that’s very important in sustaining each of their lives.
The friendship bond didn’t form, however, until after a huge part of the story had unfolded. The beginning of the story felt very repetitive to me, as it was quite dialogue-heavy with Paul and Katie introducing themselves to one another and their lifestyles and interests. I strongly felt that the entire beginning could’ve been shortened to under a few minutes, as a play that has only 1 hour of screen time should be dedicated to plot development and landing the perfect ending that the audience could be satisfied with. Throughout the play, I laughed whenever Paul took his sweet time in wearing his heavy coat, carefully zipping it, and making a dramatic exit out of the cafe door. This is shown multiple times throughout the play, which illustrates an extreme repetition of events. Rather than having just that scene that spread no emotional impact to the audience, I think that the writers could’ve had Katie expressing her emotions of anger or sadness to the audience while cleaning up the Cafe in contrast to her leaving the scene in preparation for the upcoming one.
The beginning portion did feel like a very important unfolding of events in reaching the climax. I was beginning to get hooked up in the play when Paul offered Katie a type of poison that he wanted her to use to end his life. At that moment I asked myself, “What kind of friendship is this?” Eventually, though, I’ll learn that Paul is offering that poison through his high trust in Katie in getting his final wish to live in surprise within the last few moments of his life. Katie was the person that Paul would want to have breakfast with before the final few moments of his life because of the sense of comfort and empathy that Katie had given him throughout the rough periods of his life. The interactions between Paul and Katie arguing on the morality of poison were very emotional to me, as it expressed to me how much they meant to each other especially when sharing lifelong secrets. This trust in itself is what makes friendships very important, as it emphasizes the respect and support that are essential for meaningful connections.
At the end of the play when Katie got a voicemail from her ex-boyfriend in town, I almost shed tears when Paul jumped up and down in joy. The acting was top-notch and definitely impactful when having only two people discuss with one another their lifelong challenges. The silence between Paul and her ex-girlfriend was stunning, as I saw Paul’s expression of regret of not having spent his lifetime with his one true love. I wanted this acting to land a perfect ending, but instead left a cliffhanger that left many to question the events that would’ve happened. I’ve heard questions like, “Did Katie end up going back to date her old boyfriend?”, “Did Katie end up poisoning Paul that day?”, “Had Paul died shortly after Katie left the coffee shop?”. These lingering questions, in my opinion, shouldn’t be left out in any form of storytelling. This is because it emphasizes the lack of quality writing in closing the loose ends of the play to make the audience satisfied rather than craving any more events.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
