Theatre about theatre risks becoming a self-indulgent exercise, but Sam Holcroft's A Mirror, receiving its Australian premiere at Belvoir, earned significant acclaim during its 2023 Almeida Theatre (UK) run and subsequent West End transfer precisely because it uses metatheatrical games to examine urgent questions about censorship, artistic freedom, and the relationship between art and power.
The play's marketing tagline from its London productions, "This play is a lie," signals the kind of layered, reflexive storytelling that defines Holcroft's approach. Audiences attend what appears to be a wedding, an elaborate cover for an illegal underground performance in an unnamed repressive regime. This framing device, inspired by Holcroft's 2011 trip to North Korea where fake weddings and funerals serve as covers for theatre, creates immediate tension between performance and reality that permeates the entire work.
The central narrative follows Adem, a mechanic who has written a play and naively submitted it for government consideration. Čelik, a bureaucrat at the arts council, recognises Adem's potential but insists he must learn to write in the state-approved, patriotic manner rather than telling uncomfortable truths about life in impoverished high-rise flats. With the assistance of his new hire Mei and establishment playwright Bax, Čelik conducts a crash course in how to create work acceptable to an authoritarian regime.
Holcroft's script operates on multiple levels simultaneously, what one London reviewer described as having "a Christopher Nolan shape" that builds "plays within plays within plays". This structural complexity demands both precise writing and confident direction to maintain clarity while delivering the production's promised twists and surprises.
Margaret Thanos brings her experience from Furious Mattress to this mainstage directorial debut. Her observation that the play examines whether "art should be for art's sake, whether it should be reflective of the society that we're living in, or whether it should simply just be a vehicle for entertainment" positions A Mirror within ongoing debates about theatre's social responsibility that feel particularly current in 2026.
Belvoir's Eamon Flack describes the work as "like Pirandello and Kafka meet Tom Stoppard," providing useful reference points, via the Italian playwright's exploration of performance and reality, Kafka's nightmarish bureaucracies, and Stoppard's intellectual playfulness all find echoes in Holcroft's construction. As Belvoir's Artistic Director, the immediate recognition that "we had to do it" following a single reading suggests material that resonates with Belvoir's commitment to politically engaged theatre.
The casting reunites two performers with Belvoir audiences. Yalin Ozucelik returns following roles in Sami in Paradise and Uncle Vanya, while Rose Riley's previous work in The Glass Menagerie establishes her dramatic credentials. Eden Falk and Faisal Hamza complete the quartet, with Hamza's recent appearance in Sydney Theatre Company's The Talented Mr. Ripley indicating an actor comfortable with psychological complexity.
The play's exploration of censorship carries particular weight given contemporary debates about artistic freedom, cancel culture, and the limits of acceptable expression. Holcroft "directly challenges the audience to question what role theatre should play and whether it should reassure and preserve, or hold a mirror up to the society it represents," the title signaling this thematic concern.
The two-hour running time without interval, maintaining tension throughout, likely suggests a production that trusts audiences to sustain engagement with complex ideas across this substantial duration. The structure demands sustained attention as layers of performance are revealed and theatrical conventions are both employed and subverted.
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| Cast in rehearsal (image: Brett Boardman) |
For Australian audiences, A Mirror offers engagement with a contemporary play that earned significant attention in London without requiring knowledge of local references or specific political contexts. The unnamed repressive regime and universal questions about artistic freedom translate across cultural boundaries.
The production's "sting in the tail," mentioned by Flack in media dispatches, promises the kind of revelatory conclusion that recontextualises everything preceding it, a dramaturgical choice that either crystallises the work's themes or feels like cheap trickery depending on execution.
A Mirror runs February 21 to March 22 at Belvoir St Theatre's Upstairs space. Tickets and more info: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/a-mirror/
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