A Mirror
Here are two things that theatre can do really badly: plays about plays, and plays about the importance of plays. Somehow Sam Holcroft has managed to write a play-within-a-play-about-a-play-within-a-play-about-a-play that tackles the importance of theatre while being un-self-important and actually very funny, and also a structural marvel. Originally at the Almeida, now transferring to the Trafalgar Theatre, it starts by telling us we’re at a wedding (spoiler: we’re not) and then tells us we’re in a play (spoiler: we are) and then keeps peeling back layers and pulling rugs until you start questioning who you actually and what your role is in all this. We’re in a community hall – fittingly a proscenium arch within a proscenium arch in Max Jones’s brilliantly drab design – in an unspecified country, vaguely Balkan, post-Communisty, where there’s a ministry for culture which vets and censors new plays. Car mechanic Adem submits his work, a verbatim piece about his neighbours, who swear and drink and have sex. Although deputy culture minister Čelik can’t approve of the nasty bits, he sees something promising in Aden and takes him under his wing. The big questions Holcroft examines are what plays should be about - inspiration, escapism, nice stuff like that - or should they be more of (yes) a mirror of the world we actually live in, which often isn’t very nice. Director Jeremy Herrin brings humour to the fore in this production, especially in the moments whenČelik, Adem and o