The Tailor of Inverness
★★★★☆ Enduring
Traverse Theatre: Thu 14 – Sat 16 Nov 2024
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Now in its sixteenth year of production, Dogstar Theatre Company’s The Tailor of Inverness remains a compelling —and troublingly timely— depiction of the multigenerational scars of war.
Written by and starring Matthew Zajac, the play begins with Zajac’s father, Mateusz, telling the story of how went to work in Scotland, married, and eventually settled in Inverness to run a tailor’s shop for the rest of his working life.
Matthew Zajac. Pic: Tim Morozzo
However, it quickly becomes clear that the story is not as simple as Mateusz might have us believe: he begins to recount his early life and war years, interrupted with flashbacks to the times he speaks of, the tale growing more and more complicated in the telling, until after a wide loop of Poland, Russia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Italy, he finally arrives back at his settlement in Scotland post-WWII.
Until this point, Zajac has embodied his father and the tale as he told it. But now, Zajac’s own voice comes into the story, when he starts to try and understand the tangled web of his father’s hidden history. As he begins to pull at the threads of Mateusz’s life, they unravel, and he is faced with perhaps more questions than answers.
detail and care
A masterpiece of non-linear storytelling, The Tailor of Inverness begins, like Mateusz’s story, straightforwardly enough, with Zajac playing the character of his father with detail and care.
However, both the play and Zajac really come into their own in what might be considered the “second act” of this piece, when Zajac begins to jump back and forth with alacrity between his father and himself, balancing his own startling discoveries and the calmness of relating them many years later, with the increasingly heightened and emotionally fraught state of Mateusz, as he tries to make us understand why he could never go home.
Matthew Zajac with Gavin Marwick. Pic: Tim Morozzo
Ably directed by Ben Harrison, The Tailor of Inverness takes place on a simple unit set: a slightly abstracted rendition of Mateusz’s shop, where the walls are made of clothing that resembles papier-mâché. Both the set and the play’s costumes are designed by Ali Maclaurin, who provides a clothes rail full of jackets and coats that accompany Zajac through the different stages of his father’s journey, and two small white shirts at which he cannot bear to look. Lighting from Kai Fischer is simple and effective, at its best in certain flashback scenes where a nighttime look is required.
underscore
Onstage, Zajac is joined by a violinist, Gavin Marwick, who also serves as co-Musical Director and Composer with Jonny Hardie. Marwick is dressed to blend in with the set, but is never hidden from view, as integral to and alive in the show as Zajac. His musical accompaniments add another layer of life to the text, changing to evoke the play’s various locales, and underscore the action and emotion of certain scenes.
Matthew Zajac with Gavin Marwick. Pic: Tim Morozzo
The only technical let-down of The Tailor of Inverness is its use of projections. While its use of them to give supertitles for non-English dialogue is useful for audience members who don’t speak Polish, Russian, or German, it would be better off without many of the others, as currently designed.
They are a strange, bright, rectangular intrusion into the play’s otherwise analogue world that do not add enough value to make up for their distraction. The choice of colour and brightness for the supertitles, too, detracts from their integration into the world of the play, an issue that could be easily solved.
This applies to the projections used when Zajac is playing Mateusz: when he is telling his own part of the story, and the projections are showing names and photos from his family history, they are well placed.
deeply personal
The Tailor of Inverness is a deeply personal story of one man, one family, and the hidden history of one life. Yet it represents, as Zajac writes, a “vast, tragic swathe”, of Eastern Europe and the people who live there; and more broadly, the experiences of every ordinary person who has ever gone to or experienced war, and has been forever changed.
The spectre of the Second World War still looms large in the modern consciousness, but with those who were part of it nearly all gone (including Mateusz Zajac, who died in 1992), The Tailor of Inverness reminds us that we cannot let their stories die with them, or forget that humanity is still capable of the kinds of atrocities we might wish to consign to the realm of history.
Running time: One hour and twenty minutes (no interval)
Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge Street EH1 2ED
Thu 14 – Sat 16 November 2024
Evenings: 7:30pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
Website: www.dogstartheatre.co.uk
Facebook: @dogstartheatre
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Instagram: @dogstartheatre
Matthew Zajac with Gavin Marwick. Pic: Tim Morozzo
ENDS
