Circle Mirror Transformation

Objectively, group acting exercises can be pretty weird. They’re also incredibly effective at fostering teamwork and bringing people together. Playwright Annie Baker capitalizes on both these facts in her comedy Circle Mirror Transformation, so named for one such exercise. In the Performance Network production, director John Seibert and a skillful cast make good on years of experience as performers to recreate for an audience the singular trust and closeness of a handful of strangers taught to play together.

In small-town Shirley, Vermont, a member of the community institutes and teaches a six-week introductory acting course. In simplest terms, this is the entire play, whose single act concerns the class and its members: frequently reserved James (Mark Rademacher), experienced performer Theresa (Eva Rosenwald), branching-out divorcee Schultz (Taras Michael Los), and callously teenaged Lauren (Sarah Ann Leahy). James is husband to the hyper-nurturing instructor, Marty (Terry Heck); otherwise, the five are unknown to each other. At face value, the premise might sound tedious, but any viewer who has found true community within a classroom setting — especially in the study of performance — will be unsurprised by the wealth of discoveries and relationships blossoming over a fraction of one summer.

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The Piano Lesson

The magic of the Performance Network production of The Piano Lesson, as directed by Tim Rhoze, lies in realism. Spinning playwright August Wilson’s captivating three-hour journey into the nature of family, inheritance, legacy, aspiration, duty, and the paranormal into a deceptively innocuous portrait of a Depression-era African-American family is an admirable feat, one that pays off with dividends in this deep and touching drama.

Lisa Lauren Smith is protagonist Berniece, a headstrong mother and widow who keeps the story of her ancestry close to her heart; in fact, it’s usually tightly locked therein. She works full-time, raises daughter Maretha (a role shared by 10-year-old Lexa Bauer and 13-year-old Kayla Lumpkin), essentially runs the house belonging to her uncle Doaker (James Cowans), a retired railroad man, and — despite the play’s 1936 setting and the pressure for women to be married — politely rejects the businesslike proposals of smitten future preacher Avery (Lynch Travis). Her cherished family history is manifest in the troubled form of the piano passed down from her parents, covered with carvings made by her great-grandfather when he was a slave. Berniece’s connection to the piano is colored both by the price at which it was obtained and by the particulars of her late mother’s attachment to it, but despite her unwillingness to play the instrument, she simply cannot let it go; throughout the production, Smith’s stern conviction and charged emotions resonate with emphatic force.

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The War Since Eve

The primary and persistent aim of a reviewer is to be objective at all costs. Yet in truth, I'm a product of my own unique history and preferences as much as the next guy, and sometimes it's difficult to discern whether a connection I feel accurately represents the universal audience experience. With that caveat, be advised that in its world-premiere run at Performance Network Theatre, playwright Kim Carney's The War Since Eve resonated massively with this viewer: I found myself, as an adult woman with a mother, entirely at its mercy.

The play concerns feminist trailblazer Roxie Firestone (Henrietta Hermelin) and her two daughters, steadfast personal assistant Milty (Leah Smith) and rebellious, estranged Tara (Sarab Kamoo). Hours before Roxie is to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Tara reaches out to her family for the first time in decades, triggering prodigal-son levels of unfairness that ignite Milty’s inferiority complex like a rocket. Throughout the pre-ceremony first act and post-party second, the characters make headway into their family history and life choices, all the while affirming that mothers and daughters are patently unable to discuss when sparring is an option. Carney's characters are easily simplified into types: each has an established place in the family, and the varying ideologies are essentially concrete. However, what individual points of view they represent and the content of their disagreements are dwarfed by the universality of the high stakes and underlying ridiculousness that characterize a family argument. The playwright’s heightened take — the kind of scorched-earth battle that mothers and daughters are inexplicably capable of reversing in a moment — may not be initially recognizable from outside the fray, but feels utterly authentic on an emotional level. Yet at the same time, using the benefit of that distance, Carney unfolds these petty and regressive exchanges with abundant hilarity for the viewer.

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The Drowsy Chaperone

They just don't make 'em like they used to. Contemporary musicals have evolved to find new ways around and through the discomfiting "they-just-break-into-song" effect; gone are the days of full-cast numbers in which half the characters have no justification to be in the scene — we crave smart, edgy, believable. Yet the strictures in place for modern musicals tend to keep them from achieving the kitchen-sink, freewheeling fun of their ancestors, when threats of violence could morph into a questionably appropriate song about cooking and nobody asked questions. Incredibly, the Performance Network Theatre has its cake and eats it, too, in The Drowsy Chaperone. Written by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, the production is a showcase of follies-style vaudeville indulgence whose meta-commentary still lands it squarely in the present.

In the world of the play, The Drowsy Chaperone is a 1928 musical about a plot to foil the ingenue's impending marriage and retirement from the stage. As the charismatic bride, Janet, Andrea Mellos sparkles while demurely grandstanding that she's through being a showoff. Nervous but dedicated groom Robert (Brian Thibault) is just dim enough for the silly plot; at his right hand is gee-willikers best man and de facto wedding planner George (Matt Andersen), who's a whirling dervish on tap shoes. Plotting against the wedding are Janet's boss, cigar-chomping producer Feldzieg (Mark Hammell), and a couple of wise guys (Pete Podolski and Phill Harmer), even as Feldzieg's airhead assistant (Eva Rosenwald) maneuvers to take the spotlight. Mild conniving pits a Latin lover with all the subtlety of a silent film star (Scott Crownover) against Janet's protector, the boozy belter of the show's title (Naz Edwards); the interaction of the half-wit Don Juan with the half-gone happy drunk is certainly something to behold. Musical direction by R. MacKenzie Lewis and choreography by Phil Simmons are equally strong with solo numbers and wall-of-song feats by the dozen players, backed up by the big sounds of a four-piece combo. The self-consciously dated feel of the Jazz-age performances feels like the best kind of fun we're not allowed to have any more since the world got all serious.

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Sonia Flew

The Performance Network opens its season with a difficult perspective on political conflict, the children compelled to fight for their countries, and the parents who think they know better. However, the David Wolber–directed Sonia Flew doesn't feel like propaganda; instead, it presents two beautifully sad family portraits that make the political very personal indeed.

Playwright Melinda Lopez's intriguing structure presents challenges that pay off handsomely in this production. The first act introduces a contemporary family preparing to celebrate the holidays just months after 9/11. Son Zak (Russ Schwartz) confidently defends his revelation that he is leaving college to enlist in the military, which upsets no one more than his mother, Sonia (Milica Govich). Although its members are at odds, this family certainly feels like a cohesive unit, and the ensuing dinner-table battle sets the stakes high. Zak alludes to Sonia's own origins in Cuba and the circumstances of her departure, which she swears she will never talk about — until the second act, set in 1961 Havana, with the same cast switching roles to depict the flight of young Sonia (Christina L. Flynn), part of a real movement known as Operation Pedro Pan.

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