When four lost New Englanders enrolled in Marty’s community center drama class experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. Annie Baker’s new comedy is a beautifully crafted diorama, a petri dish in which we see, with hilarious detail and clarity, the antic sadness of a motley quintet.
What Is the Story of Circle Mirror Transformation?
Set in a community center in a small Vermont town, Circle Mirror Transformation follows the progress of four students in a beginners’ acting class taught by a free-spirited woman named Marty. It’s a motley group, including a lonely divorced man, a withdrawn high school student, a former New York actress who’s just moved to town, and Marty’s husband, Peter, who seems to be headed for a midlife crisis. The play’s title comes from one of the many acting exercises the characters engage in during class, which—over time—reveals aspects of their personality and hopes for the future.
