Express Yourself: “Circle Mirror Transformation” at the Harbor Stage Company

The setting is a local community center, familiar to those of us who’ve spent time in small New England towns. A chair or two against the walls, lots of room for various activities in the center; you can almost smell the cleaning fluid. There are five people sprawled on the floor in darkness, counting off numbers; anytime two people speak at once, the group is told to start over. Long pauses, frequent silences; these are hallmarks of playwright Annie Baker’s style, and staging them is certainly a triumph for director Jonathan Fielding, who perfectly captures the natural rhythms and subtext of real conversations and the spaces between them.

We’re in Week One of an expressive theatre class, one that will allow the audience to glimpse—through the eyes of the instructor and the four students—more than just vignettes of these lives, so different from each other but yet which develop an unquestionable harmony as the weeks go by.

The counting exercise isn’t the only one about listening; each participant is invited to tell the life story—of some other group member. And the audience, too, is asked to listen as the students slowly reveal more and more of themselves. Fielding isn’t afraid of silences, and he uses them to spectacular effect. We learn as much from the spaces between words as we do from the words themselves. And playwright Annie Baker is constantly asking for the audience’s close attention to the people on stage, even as they develop their own ability to pay attention.

The class is facilitated by Marty (D’Arcy Desham), an encouraging improvisational drama teacher who faces a challenging group: Lauren (Jackie Scholl), who was hoping to do some “real acting”; Theresa (Corbett Winslow), recently arrived from New York and so over-the-top enthusiastic; and finally the surname-only Schultz (Robert Kropf), bruised by a recent break-up and trying out the man-friendly way of grieving by embarking on a brief but torrid affair with Theresa. Eventually the audience comes to understand that Marty is dealing with a precarious financial situation, which may be the reason the group is padded out by the presence of her husband James (Robin Bloodworth).

It’s not a premise that one might think could support a two-act play (and in fact it’s my feeling that Baker could have condensed part of the second act to get it down to 90 minutes. But then, I’ve felt that way about a lot of the theatre I’ve seen this summer). And this play does work.

With such a character-driven play, the cast needs to trust itself and develop rapport, which this group does without turning a hair. And that rapport extends to the audience. Everybody knows someone like Desham with her New Age over-confidence and perky attitude. The greatest transformation is seen in Lauren; she begins the course cynical and withdrawn, to the point of us wondering if she’s meant to be on the spectrum (she’s not: she’s a teenager, part of a demographic that often mimics autism); by the end of the six sessions she is an excellent participant, clear and focused.

Kropf’s role seems to be made for him (to be fair, any role I’ve seen him in seems “made for him”) as he shifts his weight from foot to foot, his words self-deprecating, his face and body (and even his silences) extraordinarily expressive. And Corbett does a great job with the frenetic and trying-a-bit-too-hard Theresa.

Bloodworth’s James is the least well-defined; at first one thinks his role is simply as “fourth student” in the group. He obviously doesn’t want to be there and play his wife’s silly reindeer games. But it may be his final self-revelation that brings outside reality into the vulnerable center of the circle.

Scenic designer Justin Lahue is again spot-on, this time in his portrayal of a small-town Vermont community center, and John R. Malinowski’s clever lighting plays a subtle backdrop to the emotions experienced onstage.

And Fielding crafted such a wonderful flow that even the constant blackouts between short scenes eventually got to seem less a distraction than a way of giving the audience space and time to absorb the characters’ revelations.

There is magic in every Harbor Stage Company production, and Circle Mirror Transformation is no exception: the audience feels it understands and is part of the story, even as the secrets revealed tear the group apart… we still feel like we’ve been through something meaningful and richly unexpected with them.

It’s theatre at its finest: engrossing, empathetic and—yes—magical. Harbor Stage has yet again offered the Cape Cod community the opportunity to feel and care and grow, and Circle Mirror Transformation shouldn’t be missed.

review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

photos by Justin Lahue