At about the time you may start wondering it yourself, one of the students finally asks the teacher, "Are we going to be doing any real acting?"
Annie Baker’s sentimental comedy “Circle Mirror Transformation” takes place in an adult “creative drama” class where, rather than workshopping scenes from actual plays, participants frequently sit or lie in the round, practicing rudimentary team-building exercises. In one running gag, they try counting to 10 as a group before any two of them simultaneously call out the same number.
Among the niftier aspects of director Susan Reid’s Theatre in the Square production is how her cast does it, perfectly pausing between and then synchronizing their lines. Whether that’s real acting, though, is as questionable as the instructional value of another role-playing game in which certain people are assigned “characters” that include an inanimate baseball glove or stuffed snake from one classmate’s childhood.
The satirical possibilities are initially promising, but as their six-week course continues, Baker’s play becomes less a matter of poking fun at -- or shedding light on -- the acting process and more often resembles a shared psychotherapy session instead. Gradually, secrets are revealed involving failed (or failing) marriages, sexual indiscretions and entanglements (both past and present), parental neglect, and child abuse.
As the teacher, the ordinarily indomitable Shelly McCook is curiously understated in a part that could have used greater flamboyance or eccentricity. The equally capable David de Vries is largely wasted as her husband, a former hippie.
Without such experienced reputations to precede them, the rest of Reid’s ensemble fares somewhat better: Steven L. Hudson as a newly single man on the make; Amber Chaney as the emotionally fragile object of his desire; and Rachel DeJulio as a high school student and the only member of the class who seems to have legitimate acting aspirations.
The focal point of Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay’s nice set (a community-center rehearsal room) are three large mirrors on wheels. Reid does an effective job of strategically repositioning them throughout the show, so that even when actors have their backs to us, or might be blocked by the people seated next to them in the circle, we can still see their reflections and gauge their reactions accordingly.
Baker structures the play as a repetitious series of vignettes that grows prematurely tedious, essentially requiring designer Cristopher P. Kettrey to simply keep bringing up and taking down his lights. But he and Reid end the show with an undeniably beautiful flourish, as two of the students imagine a future chance encounter. It’s a singularly transformative moment, albeit a bit too little too late.
Theater review
“Circle Mirror Transformation”
Grade: B-
Through May 29. 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays; 2:30 p.m. Wednesday (May 25). $20-$33. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369. theatreinthesquare.com.
Bottom line: More about circles and mirrors than transformations.
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