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by Sam Holcroft, directed by Tamara Vuckovic

ARC, 916 Bathurst Centre, Toronto

March 12–28, 2026

Čelik: “Theatre isn’t about what is but what could be”

What happens when reality catches up with satire? ARC’s production of British playwright Sam Holcroft’s A Mirror (2023) provides a good example. A play was initially received in London as “a darkly comic play” (The Times) a “mischievous satire” (TimeOut) or a “dark, elusive farce” (The Stage). The present production comes across as none of these because government suppression of free speech is not part of some dystopian future as in the play but happening in real life today. This causes director and cast to struggle to find the right tone in which to present it. In 2023, a play like A Mirror might have seemed like a prescient warning. Now, when in our neighbour to the South people have been attacked for telling the truth, the play feels like it is lightheartedly telling us things we already know to be dire.

A Mirror is set in an unnamed totalitarian state where the populace is granted the right to peaceful assembly only for weddings and funerals. The auditorium the 918 Bathurst Centre, a former Buddhist temple, is decorated as if for the wedding of Layla and Joel and proceeds as such. Once a government observer leaves, we are told the wedding party will present a play.

Scene 1 of this play concerns former soldier and first-time playwright Adem, who has been called before Mr. Čelik, the Director of Ministry of Culture. Adem’s play The Ninth Floor has been passed up through various levels of readers to Čelik’s attention because in just a few pages it infringes on such a large number of censorship rules. Čelik, however, is interested in the play because of how accurately Adem has depicted the conversations of the people who live in his apartment building.

After Čelik, his secretary Mei and Adem read a passage from the play, Adem has to admit that he did not make up any of the dialogue. He merely transcribed from memory everything he heard. As Čelik points out, accurate as these transcriptions are, they don’t constitute a play. The episodes not are linked and there is no dramatic arc. The worst part is that Adem’s play focusses on how terrible the lives of people are under the present regime and would seem to be sharp critique of it. Yet, Čelik has such faith in Adem, that he asks him to write another play that conforms more to the rules of drama and that would portray what is good about present-day life. As Čelik says, “You’ve shown me the filth. Now show me the beauty”.

Adem returns after Čelik has read Adem's new play and Čelik is still unhappy. All Adem has done is transcribe the conversation we have just heard in Scene 1. At this point we realize that Holcroft’s title has more than one meaning. Given that Čelik hides copies of banned works by Shakespeare, the title is an allusion to Hamlet’s words about the function of acting, “to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature”, that is to reflect reality. As the same time, Holcroft’s play undercuts this notion by showing what happens when a mirror reflects another mirror. Holcroft’s piece shows us a play within a wedding ceremony, then a play within that play and now a play reflecting that play within a play.

Holcroft is making two conflicting points. The serious point is that authoritarian regimes, as we know from the news every day, cannot stand any truth that makes them look bad. They want only positive depictions even if these have to be completely manufactured. The comic point is that Čelik actually is right about Adem. Adem is a bad playwright. Because of his verbatim memory, Adem can write down any conversations he has heard, but, as Čelik points out, he is unable to shape them into drama.

This topic of how reality has to be altered to work as drama is hardly new since it is, of course, the dominant topic of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921). The paradox Holcroft puts forward is that truth undermines the lies of authoritarians but is only effective as drama if it is altered.

Director Tamara Vuckovic, unfortunately, does not capture the paradoxical, much less the comic aspects of the play. She also does not create a production that looks like samidzat theatre. The physical production is over-elaborate for an underground play. There is far too much furniture and properties for a play that has to be produced and hidden away at a moment’s notice. A glance at photos of the world premiere production at the Almeida Theatre in London show a bare stage with a few chairs and a table. The number of props causes all the changes of location to be cumbersome instead of smooth in a show that already suffers from lack of dramatic tension.

Vuckovic’s uncertain tone affects the actors’ performances. The most prominent part is that of Mr. Čelik (whose name is pronounced as if there were no háček on the C). Nabil Traboulsi, who has given so many fine performances in both English and French over the years, seems to be at sea as to how to portray the character. Čelik should be comically menacing, but Traboulsi is neither comic enough nor menacing enough. The scene in which he plays a deceased soldier who has to come alive periodically to read stage directions is his most obviously comic scene, but, as Vuckovic has directed it, even this does not get a laugh. Where Traboulsi fares best is in depicting Čelik’s far too obvious attempts at seducing his secretary Mei.

In contrast, Jonelle Gunderson does very well in portraying Mei’s gradual transformation from a Barbie-like underling to an independent thinker. Gunderson makes Mei’s growing alienation from Čelik and growing attraction to Adem the clearest strand of the plot.

As Adem, Paul Smith has surprisingly little to do. Smith could make Adem’s extreme naïveté funny if he were directed to do so. After all, Adem is a revolutionary without realizing that that is how his truth-telling is regarded. Adem thinks, despite everything, that he is a patriot. Sadly, all Smth shows us is Adem’s confusion.

As Bax, an honoured playwright Adem is asked to consult, Craig Lauzon is the only one who plays his role as comic from the start. After all the high praise we hear of him, the Bax that Lauzon gives us is an unkempt middle-aged man who spends his time drowning his sorrows instead of writing. Lauzon shows that Bax is all too aware that his first play was his only good one and that churning out new plays because he is famous has completely lost its lustre. Bax is thus the worst possible example for Adem to follow.

A Mirror may have been intended as a “comic play”, a “satire” or a “farce”, but it is very hard to laugh at circumstances that appear in the news every day and have implications that are far from comic. At the same time, trying to bend a play written as comic into a serious mold merely makes everything in the action seem awkward. ARC has successfully presented so many exciting plays from around the world that it is disappointing to find that one should not hit the very high mark of the others. Let’s the company returns to form next time.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Jonelle Gunderson as Layla, Nabil Traboulsi the Registrar and Paul Smith as Joel; Paul Smith as Adem and Nabil Traboulsi as Čelik; Craig Lauzon as Max, Jonelle Gunderson as Mei, Paul Smith as Adem with Nabil Traboulsi as Čelik in background. © 2026 Kendra Epik.

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