State of play: Yalin Ozucelik and Rose Riley in The Mirror
This is such a clever, provocative and enjoyable play to watch on so many levels. Written by British playwright Sam Holcroft in 2023, its production here is especially timely as one of its key themes in censorship in art.
It is a play within a play, and it is difficult to write about the opening scenes without giving too much away. However, it is set in the ‘Motherland’, an unspecified country where censorship is rife and government officials, including those working in the Arts, wear military style uniforms. It concerns a playwright who writes what he sees – hence the title, The Mirror – whether that be the foibles of his neighbours or, striding right ahead here to later scenes, the realities and politics of war. Probably needless to say, this does not go down well for those who want to live a long life.
But as well as reflecting realities, The Mirror distorts some of them. So when the audience is invited to witness the marriage of Leyla (Rose Riley) and Joel (Faisal Hamza), with the role of celebrant played by actor Yalin Ozucelik, all is not what it seems. These opening scenes are intriguing and soon lead us into the real nub of the play, which has another major shift towards the end. It is, as Belvoir artistic director Eamon Flack notes: ‘[L]ike Pirandello and Kafka meet Tom Stoppard, it’s carefully put together, it knows what it’s saying, and it’s very entertaining’.
Soon we see Hamza as Adem, a mechanic who’s written a play and naively submitted it for consideration. He’s summoned to the Arts Council by a bureaucrat, Mr Čelik (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 (Riley) – a young woman keen to stay out of the ‘re-education camps’ – and national playwriting treasure (who toes the party line) Bax (Eden Falk), Čelik takes his new protégé through a crash course in how to write a celebrated play for the national stage.
The lines between fiction and reality are blurred (you only have to think the words ‘fake news’). Holcroft’s script does not use this term, but her characters utter lines such as: ‘We are performing a fiction every day’ and ‘We don’t see the truth’ and ‘Soldiers fight because they’ve been told a story and they believe in it’.
Margaret Thanos (Furious Mattress) directs this carefully orchestrated chaos, which keeps our attention throughout, from moments of near farce to a very dark finale. Ozucelik is superb as the bureaucrat, who veers from enthusiasm to statecraft to suspect advances; a bureaucrat who, once an idealist, is now part of the system. Riley, too, deserves special mention as she navigates a role from bride to government employee to accomplice with sharp renditions of naivete/diffidence/determination.
Repression, censorship, a police state that uses violence to snuff out political dissidents, free thinkers, protesters and artists. A fiction, right? Couldn’t happen here? We don’t have politicians who pressure arts bodies to preclude authors from literary events? Oh, but wait… yes, we most certainly do. We have the right to free speech and to protest without fear of police violence. Oh, but wait… what just happened to those protesting a genocide in Sydney? Thanos elaborates on censorship in The Mirror’s program notes. ‘Anyone who has studied history at all will know that most dictatorships seize power of the arts as one of their first key steps,’ she writes. ‘The Nazi regime had a whole branch of cinema and theatrical propagandised work; China has done expansive work with propagandised cinemas in the last 20 years; and there are many more examples like this. And why do these autocratic states care about cinema or theatre? Because powerful stories have a way of spreading. Arts and culture in a country shapes a national identity.’
What, Thanos goes on to ask, is Australia’s national cultural identity? There is no immediate answer, instead another question: Are you an Adem or a Celik?
Never mind the ‘Motherland’, this is a play about us. And it makes its audiences complicit. So worth seeing.
The Mirror runs until 22 March
Tickets: from $43-$98 plus booking fee
https://belvoir.com.au/productions/a-mirror/or (02) 9699 3444
