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Walk into Singtel Waterfront Theatre and you’ll find a full wedding set-up: florals, banquet chairs, romantic lighting. If the caginess of the best man and registrar didn’t already tip you off, then what happens next shatters the illusion: a state supervisor leaves the room, the wedding party gives you a final chance to leave, and decorations are rolled back under dimming lights to reveal the set of an illegal underground play. You didn’t ask for it, but you’re now an accomplice.
There is a bittersweet irony to this opening trap. A Mirror kicks off Pangdemonium’s closing season, serving as co-founder Tracie Pang’s final directorial outing. For a troupe legendary for its provocative storytelling to take its final bows with Sam Holcroft’s script – a nesting doll of plays about an underground theatre company defying a totalitarian state – well, don’t mind if we read that as a definitive mic-drop.
Co-directed by Pang alongside Timothy Koh, the show follows a group of rogue artists staging a forbidden play under the nose of “an unnamed totalitarian state”. It plays out as a messy, ideological chess match over what counts as “good” art. Čelik (Ghafir Akbar), the director of the Ministry of Culture, believes art should hold up a patriotic, sanitised mirror to society, while the young writer Adem (Zachary Pang) possesses a mammoth memory and simply wants to transcribe the unvarnished, brutal truth of the world.
Holcroft’s script is undeniably wordy, which means we occasionally run into static stretches where characters just debate across a desk. Yet, the 2.5-hour runtime flies by without an intermission thanks to moments of audience participation, some surprising and darkly comic moments, and its unsettling technical production. James Tan’s lighting snaps between warm ambers, sombre blues, and dead-eyed fluorescent white to mark transitions between plays and realities, while Jing Ng’s low-frequency sound design dials up an ominous hum that physically tightens our chests.
This claustrophobic environment anchors four spectacular, contrasting performances. Ghafir Akbar is a masterclass in terrifying bureaucratic charm: his Čelik is an earnest lover of the arts, but he’s drunk the Kool-Aid so completely that his violence feels almost reasonable. Opposite him, Zachary Pang’s Adem is almost witless and frustratingly helpless. Their dynamic is exhausting but revealing – between Akbar’s relentless monologues and Pang’s grit-teethed, tortured protests, we experience what it’s like to be steamrolled by state machinery.
Not to forget the supporting cast. Andrew Marko’s Bax – a decorated and favoured playwright of the regime – is a sell-out who has traded his artistic integrity for safety. Pompous and unlikeable, Marko’s portrayal nevertheless has a soft, devastating centre that earns our sympathy. Meanwhile, Coco Wang Ling’s Mei is a bit of a cypher. She starts as a naive state agent who’s eager to learn from Čelik, with a soldier-like stiffness that bags quite a few laughs. This melts as she falls for Adem, relating to the grim, messy reality of his war stories over the state’s polished propaganda.
As a Singaporean exposed to the real-world anxieties of media classifications and arts funding, the parallels land without help. And having watched (and massively enjoyed) Wild Rice’s recent verbatim play Girls Girls Girls, I can't help thinking that it's the Barbie to A Mirror's Oppenheimer: the former uses real interviews with queer women to celebrate a community, while the latter shows how easily the unvarnished truth can be criminalised.
The show’s ultimate masterstroke happens when the fourth wall breaks entirely. Authorities crash the wedding, the illegal play is halted, and the actors' true identities are revealed. As Akbar’s character is dragged off, he screams directly at the audience to speak out, riot, and protest. Of course, nobody does – and that is damning in itself. The trap springs shut: by choosing to be well-behaved, passive spectators, we become complicit in the state's control.
As part of a trio of plays in Pangdemonium’s swan song, A Mirror proves they are leaving as they lived: refusing to play it safe, and giving us something massive to chew on.
A Mirror is now playing at Singtel Waterfront Theatre, with shows until July 12, 2026. Tickets start from $38, available here.