Above pic : Rose Riley in A MIRROR upstairs at Belvoir Street theatre.
British playwright Sam Holcroft’s A MIRROR is the new drama playing upstairs at Belvoir Street theatre. Holcroft ’s acclaimed play premiered at the Almeida Theatre in 2023 and transferred to the West End in early 2024.
A MIRROR starts under the guise of inviting us (the audience) as guests to a wedding. We soon realise, however, that what we are really watching is an illegal, underground theatre performance.
We meet Adem (Faisal Hamza), a mechanic who’s written a play and has naively submitted it for consideration. He’s called to the arts council by a bureaucrat, Čelik (Yalin Ozucelik) ,who suspects Adem has potential – if only he can learn to write in the state-approved, patriotic way, instead of telling uncomfortable truths.
Together with his new assistant Mei (Rose Riley) and national playwriting treasure Bax (Eden Falk), Čelik takes his new protégé through a crash-course in how to write a celebrated play for the national stage…
This description of a set up to a play usually gives an audience a reasonably clear picture of the narrative line that the play will follow. This is not the case with Holcroft’s play. A MIRROR has so many different layers to it, it was like unwrapping a Russian doll. Just when one thought one had got it all, the playwright introduced another level.
Most of all, A MIRROR explores how little freedom and how open to manipulation creative artists are in societies where the central government has strong control. It even opens up debate as to whether our western democracies have too much say on artists’s work.
Margaret Thanos’ production makes for exhilarating theatre. The play is performed by a cast at breakneck speeds, uses the whole and surrounds of the theatre, and constantly zigs and zags.
A MIRROR was performed by a cast of four – Eden Falk, Faisal Hamza, Yalin Ozucelik and Rose Riley- who vividly brought the play. A lot of the action pivoted around Ozucelik’s performance which was particularly powerful.
Thanos’ creative team evocatively create the stage world; set and costume designer Angelina Daniel, lighting designer Phoebe Pilcher, composer and sound designer Daniel Herten, military consultant Jake Speer, intimacy director Chloe Dallimore and vocal coach Felicity Jurd.
This was exhilarating theatre. Sam Holcroft’s A MIRROR is playing upstairs at Belvoir Street theatre until the 22nd March 2028.
https://belvoir.com.au/productions/a-mirror/
Production photography by Brett Boardman
