On Friday 19th April, at the Grove Theatre in Eastbourne, I watched ‘Circle Mirror Transformation’ by Annie Baker, produced by the tríada theatre company and directed by Dimitra Barla and Strat Mastoris.
The play followed five very diverse people attending a weekly class in acting. Under the guidance of their teacher, they do exercises and perform monologues in the identity of one another. Secrets are shared. Relationships develop and dissolve. They support one another and they antagonise one another. Tensions flare and are resolved.
It’s a piece made up of many little microscenes, with little in the way of plot as such. It sounds like a recipe for incoherence and yet somehow the audience became absorbed by these glimpses of the lives - past, present and future - of these characters.
All five actors were superb.
Marty is the teacher who has to provide the stimuli and keep it all together. Despite Winnie Ikediashi having only two days notice and still occasionally being ‘on the book’, she gave a strong and convincing performance of a woman who could be sensitive and tender but had plenty of backbone and resilience.
Theresa has been acting for fifteen years. She has a brief relationship with Schultz but deep down she is still pining for her New York ex-boyfriend. Fenia Gianni played Theresa with subtlety and nuance, bringing out both her joyfulness and her lack of fulfillment.
Jon Terry gave a magnificent performance as Shultz, portraying him as a lonely man desperate to find love who, of course, tries too hard. His very posture conveyed the overwhelming sense of sadness that filled this character. I recently watched this talented actor in the ‘Rabbits in Headlights’ production of Animal Farm.
Leo is a young man trapped in awkward adolescence. His stance, his half-hearted gestures and his occasional anger suggested disenchantment: he had expected they would be doing a real play; he longs to perform as Maria in West Side Story. Edward Garcia played this character with graceful fluidity so that despite Leo’s disaffection and rebelliousness, the audience’s heart warmed towards him. I expect we shall hear more of this gifted young actor in the years to come.
John Newcombe played James, Marty’s husband but a man with a track record for adultery. I particularly enjoyed watching his face as he reacted to the other characters but every aspect of this performance - voice, gesture and delivery - was pitch perfect.
Not only were the individual performances strong but these five actors interacted superbly to produce a strong ensemble. The overall effect was mesmerising (although if this is what acting classes are like they would be hell on earth to someone as shy as myself).
Lights, sound, set design and costume did what they ought to do, supporting the actors without being obtrusive.
I have only three criticisms and the first two are terribly minor. Firstly, there were an awful lot of times when the lights went out and the actors had to rearrange themselves and this slightly disrupted the flow. Secondly, Leo wore a bright yellow top and this was very visible during these rearrangements.
My third criticism is that this play was described as being in the context of the London Bridge stabbings and indeed the actors, one by one at moments scattered through the play, stood in front of the stage and, giving their real name, were interrogated by a disembodied voice and spoke about their reactions to the terrorist attack. This was an interesting experiment in meta-theatre but it felt to me like an add-on which, in my opinion, added nothing to the play.
But the overall impression on me was that I had spent two hours in the presence of five delightful characters, learning their deepest secrets, their strengths and weaknesses, and discovering that they were human just like the rest of us. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner as the French say: to understand everything is to forgive everything. At the end of this play I felt uplifted.
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