I just saw Circle Mirror Transformation at the Huntington Theatre. There are various things I could say about it, were I writing a review, but the thing that really struck me was the last couple of minutes. (Spoilers ahead.) The play takes place in an acting class, and at the end, two characters are told to roleplay meeting each other 10 years later. They start talking, downstage, and the lights gradually tighten on them, as the actors slowly shift from being the characters pretending to being the actual 10-years-later versions of the characters. It was a wonderful bit of stage sleigh-of-hand, because the transition was absolutely smooth and…well, I suppose the fact that I started noticing the technical elements that were going into the illusion means that they could have been subtler, but it was pretty darned subtle. One element that I didn’t notice until almost the end of the scene was a costume tweak. One of the characters was a high-school girl, and part of the transition that happened in the scene was that her voice and mannerisms gradually transitioned from teenagerish to adult. At the point when she was clearly all the way into the adult-version of the character — but not before — I registered the fact that her hair was styled differently than it had been throughout the rest of the show, and various small costume elements were also contributing to the more mature look. The interesting thing here is that it was the shift in her mannerisms that made me aware of the visual elements, rather than the other way around.
This description, of course, captures nothing of the actual moment on stage, which was all about the visual and the implicit. But it was a really neat effect, and the sort of tech-acting synergy we often aim at and seldom achieve
I just saw The Aliens, and I think I may have to give Circle Mirror Transformation a shot.