Theatre review: A Mirror

In an unnamed totalitarian state, Jan Čelik (Jonny Lee Miller) is Director of the Ministry of Culture, tipped to become the next Minister and, unlike the current one, actually interested in culture: He strongly dislikes the Ministry's nickname of "censorship bureau," and prefers to think of himself as someone who nurtures promising artists and hones their talents into something that can be used for the glory of the Motherland - like the national treasure playwright Bax (Geoffrey Streatfeild,) whose success Čelik takes a lot of credit for. He thinks he's found the next big thing in mechanic and former soldier Adem (Micheal Ward,) whose debut play violates almost every censorship guideline in the book, but whose naturalistic style shows promise Čelik thinks he can mould. In fact the play is even less artful than the Director realises: Adem has a form of photographic memory, and the unconnected scenes in the play he's submitted are actually verbatim transcripts of conversations his neighbours have had, that he's heard through the building's thin walls.

When asked to write something different, Adem comes back with a precise transcript of their first meeting, complete with anything Čelik might have said that goes against the party line, setting up what is going to become less of a mentoring relationship and more of a standoff.

The USP of Sam Holcroft's A Mirror comes in its framing device: The conceit is that the Almeida is a public hall somewhere in the nation's provinces, and the audience are guests at a wedding. But the wedding is a sham, arranged to cover up the fact that the bride, groom, best man and celebrant are waiting for the officials to leave so they can perform this highly contentious play about goings-on in the Ministry of Culture (a play the Ministry has, of course, not sanctioned.) Occasionally a look-out will sound a car horn, and the play will be dropped to resume the façade, usually played for comic effect: Streatfeild roasts the happy couple in song in lieu of a best man's speech; a sex scene gets interrupted so the audience can stand and recite the sinister Oath of Allegiance.)

Max Jones' design twists the trend of using the Almeida's real brick back wall as a backdrop by creating a fake one that blends into the decor, creating a stage-within-a-stage that's only too appropriate for a show that contains plays nested within plays nested within a fake wedding. Jeremy Herrin’s production is characteristically slick and dynamic, and for the most part balances the metatheatrical weirdness with the creepier oddities of the regime – I liked how the wedding cellist (Miriam Wakeling) goes on to provide eerie sound effects for the play-within-a-play. I’m not convinced the sense of dread ever really takes hold though; even when an authority figure (Aaron Neil) turns the focus on the audience, it was still received 100% with laughs rather than any uncomfortable shuffling in seats.

But there’s a great quartet of performances at the heart of the play, with Miller the most extreme transformation – his shaven-headed, black-gloved Čelik is twisted but agile. He looks like he’s auditioning to play the Penguin, to add to his collection of grotesque monsters like Frankenstein’s Creature and John Major. Tanya Reynolds is great as his new assistant Mei – superficially mousy due to being newly dropped into a job she doesn’t entirely understand, she’s targeted for clumsy romantic advances by her boss and Bax. But she, like Adem, is a former soldier, so not only does she have a steely side she can’t quite disguise, she also shares his worldview, particularly with regard to the truth as it happened, rather than as the playwright and official want to present it to the people.

The nation is based on North Korea, following Holcroft going there on holiday (which is… a thing that people do apparently?) I’m not sure the play actually has a whole lot that’s new to say either about repressive regimes, or about art’s ability to affect change, but if it treads familiar ground is does so entertainingly, and is consistently funny – if not quite in as twisted a way as the premise might imply. And that’s not to say there aren’t interesting areas explored: I was particularly drawn to the idea of what it means to bring someone with a photographic memory into a room when you’re in a surveillance state – he essentially amounts to another recording device.

Ward also plays things pretty close to the chest for much of the evening, over whether Adem really is the political revolutionary Čelik believes him to be, or just as painfully literal and naïve as he initially appears about his presenting of utterly unvarnished true words as art. He’s the titular mirror, reflecting back how people come across when you repeat their exact words to them. And while Holcroft largely takes his side about exposing the hypocrisy of people like the Director, Čelik makes good points about how this bull-in-a-china-shop approach only alerts the authorities more quickly, as opposed to the “Trojan Horse” approach he claims to be implementing, planting ideas in people’s minds through seemingly innocuous work. Miller’s performance manages to combine grotesquery with nuance, which in itself is a good argument for what non-literal art can achieve. A Mirror itself isn’t likely to revolutionise any discourse, but it does, ironically enough, provide a strong example of how a distorting mirror can reflect truths more effectively than a plain one.

A Mirror by Sam Holcroft is booking until the 23rd of September at the Almeida Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.