Sydney Reviews

At the forty minute mark, Lauren, the youngest character in Circle Mirror Transformation says something akin to “when are we going to start acting?” At the sixty minute mark, the same character asks “Is this going to get better?”

Prescient questions in this pedestrian production of Annie Baker’s pretty pedestrian play.

In an all American small-town community hall, wood veneer panelled and mirrored back wall, five people associate to take part in an amateur acting class run by Marty, a passionate Pollyanna teacher who leads the group in a series of drama games.

She intends to be a facilitator but she’s a bit of a dictator, benevolent, but still a controller, a semi tough-love mama. The personification of what makes America grate again.

Her class consists of her husband, James, Theresa, an actress who failed to make the cut in New York, a recently divorced woodworker, Schultz, and a desultory teenager, Lauren, who either wants to be an actress or a veterinarian.

The play proceeds as a series of theatre games, the main one where each character mirrors in monologue one of the other’s life experience. Interspersed with these acting classes are glimpses into the real world dramas and intrigues these characters are progressing through.

It’s a six week course and the audience is made to feel it as it lumbers its way through a hundred and five minutes of vapid vignette and blackouts.

Rebecca Gibney as den mother Marty, Cameron Daddo as mid life crisis James, Nicholas Brown as the putz Schultz, Jessie Lawrence as the topsy turvy Theresa are all fine and cosy, the playtime made rosy, but it’s Ahunim Abebe’s depiction of a withdrawn teenager, Lauren, that rings truest, an authenticity that generates real interest in a character trajectory where the others just appear to be in rotational orbit.