The job of a playwright is to hold up a mirror to nature and reflect it truthfully. Not an easy thing to do, if you live in a totalitarian state and the censor dictates what audiences can see and cannot see.
Theatre censorship began in the UK in 1737 and was not abolished until 1968. The Lord Chamberlain had complete jurisdiction over what could be staged. The only way for audiences in the late 1950s to see, for instance, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was for the actual theatre building to turn itself into a private member’s club
Sam Holcroft’s play is about censorship in totalitarian states and one way for theatre producers to get past the censor is to put on a fake wedding or fake funeral and invite audiences to attend. Once they are certain the secret police are no longer around, they begin the play proper.
The production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, tries to recreate such an immersive experience at Trafalgar Theatre. The audience good humouredly enters into the game of taking part in the wedding service.
A Mirror is a play within a play, within a play, within a play; rather like those Russian dolls. The play has so many layers you may have difficulty keeping up. Sam Holcroft is deliberately confusing and misleading. That’s the whole point. It’s not an easy play to act. It’s not an easy play to watch.
Jonny Lee Miller is cast as a sinister minister of culture, who encourages a first-time playwright (Samuel Adewunmi) to make his work more acceptable. Tanya Reynolds plays the minister’s secretary. They enact his verbatim scripts
A Mirror will prove divisive. My guess is that it will appeal most to young audiences who enjoyed a film like Everything Everywhere All At Once.
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