Writer: Annie Baker
Director: Emma Cornford
The penultimate show in a season of modern great plays and playwrights at the Tower Theatre that has included Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, James Graham’s Ink and the forthcoming version of Howard Brenton’s Anne Bolyen, Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker satirises the nature of theatre training itself. This insightful production, directed by Emma Cornford, finds all the intimate sorrow in a summer drama class that promises a basis in acting but becomes a form of abusive group therapy. Baker is one of the great contemporary American naturalist playwrights, and by trusting the soft flow of the writing, Cornford’s adaptation is full of meaning about identity and self-discovery.
Joining a short seasonal class led by Marty, a diverse age range of students is challenged by her methods, a series of intimate exercises and games that dig into the personal. As relationships form and crumble between Lauren, Theresa, Schultz and Marty’s husband James, their learning brings plenty of secrets, mistakes and betrayals.
Baker’s writing is unlike that of any other dramatist, constructed from stream of consciousness and conversations that rely less on plot and dramatic incident and more on the culminating intersection of strangers having bland, regular conversations in informal settings. To perform Baker well – as the cast of this Tower Theatre production does – the key is not to fight the rhythm or try too hard to make it pointedly meaningful but, as Cornford shows, to allow the interactions and stakes to build. Astutely, the director notes that those stakes may always be relatively low – who loves whom or lets them down – but for the individual, they feel world-ending or monumental.
Partly that works by capturing the awkwardness of each scenario, relative strangers who endure stilted conversations in the early classes, slowly becoming more familiar with one another, perhaps overly so, especially as Marty’s revelatory approaches backfire in comic and often slight tragic ways as people overshare, desperate to be known. And this production maintains its tone of sincerity, lending credibility to the range of characters who become oddly united as the class and Marty’s repeated exercises wear on.
Performances are strong and in harmony, sketching individuals just enough to build trust between them while retaining the distance of people meeting only once a week or so in strained circumstances that often ask more than they want to give. Cerys McLaren’s Lauren is the quietest, desperate to do some real plays so she can land a part in her school production; Siobhán Callaghan’s Theresa hides a broken heart and possibly a failed acting career, fleeing New York for this small Vermont group, while Cameron Jones’ Schultz offers an aggressive vulnerability that tips into obsession. Their tutor, Sangita Modgil’s Marty finds her own assumptions challenged while Alan Maddrell’s James struggles with their marriage in a very public way.
Essentially a piece about what it means to act both in plays and in the performance of life, this production of Circle Mirror Transformation really understands the loose, evolving, but directed way that Baker writes, finding the tragedies of disconnection in everyday small-town America.
Runs until 18 July 2026
