Micheal Ward and Geoffrey Streatfeild in A Mirror at Almeida Theatre. Photo credit Marc BrennerAll is pink and lovely, until that is, you scan the back page of the order of service draped on your seat which reads as a sinister oath of allegiance to the power of the state and its rights over you as a citizen. This is no ordinary ceremonial union and Sam Holcroft’s A MIRROR is no ordinary play.
Besuited Jonny Lee Miller enters unassumingly — looking every inch an usher, milling with audience members who are oblivious to his presence as they take their seats. Then the play’s afoot. It soon becomes clear that we are in a dystopian world where putting on a play amounts to a subversive act of sedition and the wedding party is a mere ruse to distract any potential agents who may have infiltrated the gathering. One soon makes herself known and having satisfied herself the event is legit, departs giving her authorisation for the marriage to proceed. The icing sugar set is struck by the players and the audience finds itself in the dowdy office of Čelik the minister for culture (JLM) who has summoned a playwright Adem (Micheal Ward) whose dazzlingly original first work has come to his attention. Acting as the minister’s recently appointed flunky, Mei (Tanya Reynolds) assists as best as she can — which includes awkwardly reading aloud the part of the prostitute in a scene from the play. She does so with the mortified and stilted tones of one who has never before engaged in such a pursuit and her facial expressions and physical responses are magnificently funny and skin-crawlingly embarrassing in equal measure. As a former dissenting voice who has become a mouthpiece for officialdom and consequently enjoyed the trappings of success, flamboyant letch Bax (Geoffrey Streatfeild) realises his own hypocrisy and eventually implodes at the notion of his complicity in being used by the state to extinguish genuine thoughts and voices.
Directed by Jeremy Herrin, as it progresses the play takes a dark and eventually absurdist skew, covering censorship, control, thought police, unrequited desire, corruption, jealousy, power play and misogyny. It’s Kafka meets Gogol with a dash of Woody Allen and a pinch Agatha Christie and although the denouement is somewhat telegraphed, it is none-the-less effective and sufficiently forceful to give everyone who witnesses it, considerable pause for thought.
