Circle Mirror Transformation at HOME
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
When Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation first opened off-Broadway in 2009, it won the Obie Award for Best New Play and was voted one of the top ten plays of 2009 by the New York Times. We’re thrilled that the play is receiving its first major UK revival and Northern Premiere at HOME.
In a small town in Vermont, New England, five unlikely people meet, in their local community centre, when they sign up to attend a creative drama class for adults. Free-spirited Marty, played by Amelia Bullmore (Scott & Bailey, Twenty Twelve, The Crucible) leads the group through six weeks of drama exercises and games. The people who sign up to attend the drama class are the recently divorced Schulz (Con O’Neill), a former actress Theresa (Sian Clifford), a reserved high school student Lauren (Yasmin Paige), and Marty’s quiet husband, James (Anthony Ofoegbu). Over the course of the drama sessions, their lives become increasingly entangled and altered in the most entertaining and stirring ways.
Writer Annie Baker was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2014 and is considered to be one of the most talented playwrights to have emerged in recent years. HOME’s Artistic Director Walter Meierjohann has said that Annie Baker is “the most exciting contemporary American playwright. Her musical ear for dialogue, her emphasis on ordinary people, and her beautifully heightened naturalistic plays make her a Chekhov of the 21st century”.
Circle Mirror Transformation boasts a highly accomplished cast of familiar faces from theatre and television and a terrifically talented bunch of creatives. The team is headed up by Director Bijan Sheibani, fresh from directing a sell-out run of Inua Ellam’s Barber Shop Chronicles at the National Theatre. Sheibani is sure to bring his outstanding creative flair to what promises to be an extraordinary production.
