"Orson's Shadow" was the first piece that I saw Cromer shape. Up until then, I had only seen more or less conventional narratives conventionally directed; Richard Foreman and Elizabeth LeCompte of the Wooster Group were the only auteurs around, but they didn’t stage standard narrative plays. But here, on that afternoon in 2005, was an artist who had taken a character-driven piece and made it an atmosphere. The actors were lit dimly; it was like watching figures edge their way through fog to get at your dreams.
His early masterpiece was his 2009 interpretation of "Our Town," in which he appeared as the Stage Manager. Whoever saw that production wasn’t likely to forget it. He took Thornton Wilder's homespun tale about loss and created an elegy that made you mourn for all the living you'd eventually lose, including yourself.
With "The Counter" (at the Laura Pels, through Nov. 17), Cromer's gift for intimacy is in full flower. It's fascinating to see how he makes the already small stage feel even smaller, by building it out toward the audience, so we’re sitting with the characters in that diner while they choose life over what's been lost.
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