In which I went to the theatre!
Circle Mirror Transformation opens with the lights down, an EXIT sign appearing out of the darkness. The lights come up, revealing that the EXIT sign marks the door through which the five characters come and go throughout the play. There is only the one setting: a studio with one mirrored wall and, facing the audience, a single door. Entrance and exit.
Raise your hand if you're familiar with Sartre.
It's the second show of the Huntington's 2010-2011 season, and it's good, if not amazing. The script is intriguing and the acting is superb -- Marie Polizzano is especially brilliant as twitchily sullen 16-year-old Lauren. Her body language is quintessential teenager.
The play unfolds in a series of vignettes. Marty (short for Martha) runs an acting class at the community center in Shirley, VT. She is married to James, who is also taking the class. On the first day, Marty shares a story about how she met James, charming her three new students: Schultz, divorced for a year but still wearing his wedding ring; Theresa, new in town and afraid she was wrong to leave her douchebag ex in New York; and Lauren, who (and I'm quoting the Globe reviewer) manages to "melt into the woodwork and occupy center stage at the same time."
The door is there, clearly marked by the EXIT sign, and there are times when the characters use it to flee a scene. But an escape from the scene isn't an escape from the play (or from life), and when they re-enter the room, all the baggage they've accumulated over the weeks between acting classes (and over the years before) is waiting for them.
"She really messed with my head," Schultz says of Theresa, near the end of the play (although there are no villains here). As in Sartre, hell is other people, although these characters are, for the most part, substantially more likable.
Raise your hand if you're familiar with Sartre.
It's the second show of the Huntington's 2010-2011 season, and it's good, if not amazing. The script is intriguing and the acting is superb -- Marie Polizzano is especially brilliant as twitchily sullen 16-year-old Lauren. Her body language is quintessential teenager.
The play unfolds in a series of vignettes. Marty (short for Martha) runs an acting class at the community center in Shirley, VT. She is married to James, who is also taking the class. On the first day, Marty shares a story about how she met James, charming her three new students: Schultz, divorced for a year but still wearing his wedding ring; Theresa, new in town and afraid she was wrong to leave her douchebag ex in New York; and Lauren, who (and I'm quoting the Globe reviewer) manages to "melt into the woodwork and occupy center stage at the same time."
The door is there, clearly marked by the EXIT sign, and there are times when the characters use it to flee a scene. But an escape from the scene isn't an escape from the play (or from life), and when they re-enter the room, all the baggage they've accumulated over the weeks between acting classes (and over the years before) is waiting for them.
"She really messed with my head," Schultz says of Theresa, near the end of the play (although there are no villains here). As in Sartre, hell is other people, although these characters are, for the most part, substantially more likable.