If there is such a thing as the afterlife, then Harold Pinter must be looking down from it now, and spluttering with rage. The master of the dramatic pause has been outdone. US wunderkind playwright Annie Baker doesn't just use pauses between sentences. She crafts silence into entire sections of mute dialogue, like an invisible sculptor. Baker forges silence into eloquent, internalised language. And in this practically perfect production, silence is golden. Every time the characters can’t think what to say, or feel inhibited from saying what is really on their minds, a humiliating stillness envelops the stage, populated by unspoken accusations they can’t bring themselves to utter. It’s amazing.
Circle Mirror Transformation follows four participants and their teacher at a six-week Creative Drama course in Vermont, USA. Over a series of vignettes, we see them move from puzzlement at the awkward drama games teacher Marty makes them play, through frustration at how meaningless the games seem to be, and finally towards some kind of self-understanding brought about by the intensity of the shared activities. They pose as trees and beds, they pretend to be each other, they construct entire scenes out of the words ‘I want to have it’ and ‘You can’t have it’, and they repeat the words ‘goulash’ and ‘ak-mak’ in a desperate effort to find meaning where there is none. Ultimately, what they experience is more like Drama Therapy than acting classes. It may not be what they thought they were signing up for, but by the end everyone is altered. The artificial, outwardly pointless nature of the games contrasts with the intense relatability of the characters’ real lives and feelings. Marty the teacher turns out to be a kind of Madame Arcati figure: she didn’t realise the power she wielded to change people’s lives with her little games, until it was too late.
The four students are very different personalities: there’s Schultz, a recently divorced carpenter, played by Alex Greene; Lauren, a slightly inhibited high school pupil who wants to play Maria in West Side Story (Evangeline LaFond); Theresa, a former actor (Alex Coupland); and Marty’s husband James (Andrew Spielmann). Marty the class leader herself is played by Hope Healy, with all the excruciating patronisation and thinly-veiled vulnerability of a teacher who knows they’re peddling bullshit but needs to believe it has value.
Together, under the direction of Charlie Lewis, this cast serves up some of the most finely-tuned acting you’re likely to see, on either the student or the professional stage. For one thing, so accurate are their American accents that I was convinced they were all visiting undergraduates from the United States. In fact, only two of them (Greene and LaFond) are Americans. The others have just watched a lot of Netflix. Companies like the National Theatre spend thousands on voice coaches, and still don’t get such an authentic effect. And it’s not just the voices. The mannerisms and even the facial expressions seem credibly rooted in Vermont.
And beyond the voices, the way these performers react to each other, watch each other, and trust each other, is remarkable. Towards the end there is a phenomenally powerful (and again, toe-curlingly embarrassing) scene where they each have to write down a personal secret. The papers are then folded up, and each participant draws one at random and reads it out to the group. Without revealing the plot, I’ll just say it’s painfully obvious who wrote each one. The scene ends with them all looking at each other (silently of course) in accusation, astonishment, guilt, indignation and slack-jawed horror, while the lights slowly fade.
All these actors will no doubt be appearing in multiple productions over the coming months and years. But Greene (who plays Schultz the joiner) is only here till the end of the year, on a visiting programme from Columbia. So catch him while you can. There’s something of the Robert De Niro about him: the way he squints his eyes in concentration while listening to someone talk, a slightly confused but threatening smile on his lips.
Many years ago, I found myself in a somewhat similar class to Marty’s. It was a course in ‘assertiveness for men’. Just as in Circle Mirror Transformation the early days felt unnatural and idiotic. We had to start each session by saying our own name and something we’d done that day of which we were proud. We had to walk slowly towards each other and sense the point at which our auras felt invaded. Ridiculous, right? But after the first three weeks, the power of the exercises started to seep into us. We yearned for each class. It became more than a learning exercise, and mutated into a life-altering experience, one which every member of our group will never forget. (It also worked.)
And that may be what Annie Baker’s extraordinary play is all about: how people can be opened up, turned around and, yes, ‘transformed’ by a simple set of exercises: how, with a bit of collaboration, imagination and mutual support, people who’ve reached a dead end can find a new path.
At the end of the play, Schultz and Laura are asked, as a final exercise, to improvise what they would say to each other if they met in ten years’ time. Their dialogue gradually transforms into them actually meeting each other in ten years, and reflecting on what did become of the people they met in that intense six-week programme. The circle is complete. Tears poured from my eyes like an overflowing washing-up bowl. And without even realising it, I was on my feet applauding.
