Review #2 of 2: Mirror Lake by Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs

It's spooky scary season, y'all.

Jarrott Productions chose Steven Dietz's two-hander Mirror Lake to fit the season. Director Caroline Crearley makes the most of the intimate space at the Trinity Street Players' space in central Austin, and MacKenzie Mulligan's lighting is appropriately dark and suddenly spotted with reveals. It's a tale of a couple married now for ten years who have the custom of trying to scare one another witless on their anniversary. They travel away from home, each of them having prepared some stunt; there's a regularity to it, and they've determined a sequence. On even anniversaries one gets to go first; on odd anniversaires, the other. This is the unusual "love language" alluded to in the company's postings. The anniversary day begins with one of the spouses receiving an envelope with instructions.

 

 

As the lights come up, Bryan Bradford and Juliet Robb are stationed close to the audience, each behind a line of dimly lit lanterns. Speaking separately, evidently not hearing one another, they make mystical, sweeping motions about those lanterns as they reveal the outlines of this odd matrimonial compact. You'll learn later in the action that this fascination with the dark and with being terrified is something that at their first encounter they realized they had in common. And this annual ritual is what gives their marriage zest and meaning,

 

This being the Halloween season, the disconnected seance-like beginning of the play should be telegraphing something to you. Maybe the Star Wars trope I've got a bad feeling about this.

 

Spouses Philip and Dinah make the audience their confidants. Each describes strategems and tactics undertaken to fool the other. In effect, those in the house become the omniscent observers, perceiving the feints, fakes, and distractions being practiced. Philip bought a new suitcase; Dinah covertly purchased a duplicate of it; Philip knew that somehow and marked his own so he couldn't be fooled by a substitution. The choice of destination for the tenth anniversary is a cabin on Mirror Lake, somewhere upstate; it's not clear how that decision was reached, but each spouse has a secret reason to anticipate it. Philip has information about a trauma Dinah suffered there in the past; Dinah has a connection with the caretaker and knows that Philip secretly traveled there a week earlier when he was allegedly on a busines trip to Iowa.

 

Robb and Bradford are glib and cheerful; the playwright has provided them with almost no back story at all. No information about their lives the other 364 days of the year; no reveals of intimacy, conflict, livelihood, vulnerability, or ambition. What's Philip's profession that might summon him away on a (fake) business trip? How does Dinah spend her days? They're obviously comfortably middle class; there is no mention of any family connections in the time they've known one another. The two refer affectionately but dismissively to another couple intrigued by this annual scary game of theirs; they've discouraged their uninteresting friends from even trying. 

 

Playwright Dietz offers Dinah and Philip to us as plot devices rather than characters. Juliet Robb is impish, and enticing; Bryan Bradford is thoughtfully affectionate while definitely devious. The two actors do their very best with the thin stuff they've been provided, and yet, and yet . . .

 

In an unannounced turn at about minute 60 of this 90-minute piece, we learn that each partner has become aware (only recently?) of a profound trauma suffered long ago by the other. On this tenth anniversary, each is scheming to have said traumas re-enacted with a happier outcome.  Mirror Lake threatens to become The Gift of the Magi turned inside-out and sideways, told by the protagonists like a campfire ghost story.

 

Savor your shivers, admire this handsome couple, wish them the best; Mirror Lake offers them opportunity but also the perils of the best of intentions.

 

A brief concluding scene offers the agreeable surprise of a well-beloved Austin actress as the proprietor of the Italian restaurant that's always the couple's destination after the annual scares. She's friendly and unperturbed; the clam linguini is simmering on the stove, ready for the celebration.

 

EXTRA

Click to view program sheet for Mirror Lake

 

 

 

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Mirror Lake
by Steven Dietz
Jarrott Productions

October 16 - November 2, 2025

Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm

Trinity Street Playhouse, 4th floor, 901 Trinity Street, Austin