Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation is a deceptively simple play — on the surface, it’s a comedy about five people enrolled in a community center class about learning how to act. They work their way through six weeks of exercises intended to reduce their inhibitions and open them to being more expressive and comfortable onstage. None seem bound for onstage careers, although one says she’s worked as an actress and another, a high school student, aspires to be one. But they do learn a lot — about themselves and each other. In fact, they learn how to act on the broader stage of life in this award-winning play that’s closing the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s current season.
Marty (Charlotte Booker) is the hippy-dippy instructor, a woman of boundless energy, warmth and good intentions who isn’t too far ahead of her students in terms of self-exploration. Perhaps to boost enrollment, she has coerced her awkward husband James (Andrew May), a college professor, to enroll in the class, although it’s apparent he’d prefer to be almost anywhere else. Schultz (Sam Gregory) is recently divorced and heartbreakingly eager for a new connection; he’s creative — a furniture maker — but has a hard time letting go of old attitudes and past behavior. Theresa (Mattie Hawkinson), the former actress, is clearly on the run from a past life and a bad relationship; she is physically at home in many of the exercises Marty proposes but has a hard time fully engaging with others. Sixteen-year-old Lauren (Ronete Levenson) is barely articulate at first, but she blossoms as the play’s story unfolds — an unlikely source of insight into the other
characters.Circle Mirror Transformation, presented by the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, is onstage through June 7. cincyplay.com.
