"'Circle Mirror Transformation' - Wicked Games with Custom Made Theatre" (Bay Area Reporter)

Circle Mirror Transformation, now being mounted by the Custom Made Theatre Company, is the third major Bay Area presentation of Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker's work in the past few years—following John at A.C.T. and The Flick at Shotgun Players. It is every bit as oblique, intelligent and goosebumpy as those other love 'em or hate 'em shows (Take that as lure or warning). I'm an inamorato, which made the creepy intimacy of this one all the more engrossing.

An ingenious work of meta-theatrical metastasis, the play is set in a mirror-walled studio at a Vermont community center, where instructor Marty, played with saucer-eyed, granola-fed perfection by Emily Keyishian, is teaching a six-week intro-to-acting workshop to four novices, one of whom happens to be her husband (David Boyll, hitting just the right balance of fawning and fed-up). Such classes being what they are —and arts-inclined Vermonters being who they are— the weekly sessions owe as much to therapy as to Thespis.