THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS at the Finborough Theatre
★★★
“Zajac’s performance is subtle and intense. Emotions flicker beautifully across his face”
The Tailor of Inverness tells the story of Mateusz Zajac (father of writer/performer Matthew Zajac) a Polish born tailor, who settled in Inverness after the Second World War.
The difficulty is that the story is simply presented as The Tailor telling us about his life. There is no mystery or dramatic question. A buried truth does come to light, and with it questions around the honesty of our narrator, but this happens so late in the play that it’s hard to care.
His life story is interesting, as with many of the stories of displaced Europeans in the 20th century. However, the structure is aimless and the details dense and lengthy.
That said, Zajac’s performance is subtle and intense. Emotions flicker beautifully across his face. He brings his father to life with a quiet complexity of accent and physicality. His accent – a Scottish-Polish hybrid – is maintained impeccably throughout, and a real sense of the man is evoked.
Ben Harrison’s direction is varied, working with the story to create light and shade. The storytelling style is broken with dramatic sketches of the past, and with song and poetry. Some of this is recorded with Magdalena Kaleta reciting in Polish. Harrison’s choices, along with sound design by Timothy Brinkhurst, work with the narration to create a strong picture of this man’s world. The piece is accompanied throughout by Jonny Hardy (in some performances it’s Amy Geddes) on the violin, bringing a haunting melancholy to the stage.
Much of the script is in Polish, and a little Russian, with subtitles projected onto the backdrop. The use of AV throughout is carefully and well crafted. A map accompanies the description of Zajac’s time serving during the war, flagging key cities and tracing the route. Photographs of the family are projected and flashes of memory are echoed with images. This works well with Kai Fischer’s subtly shifting lighting.
Ali Maclaurin’s set sees flattened and plastered clothing pasted against the backdrop, nodding to Zajac’s profession, while evoking the horrors of mass slaughter which he remembers. It’s a thoughtful and well executed idea.
While Zajac’s story is interesting, it felt too long a piece to coast on that. I was more interested in his time in Scotland, and the experiences of Matthew Zajac himself returning to Poland to uncover the truth of his father’s past (this made up the final third of the play) than the details of his father’s time in the war, during which I got a little lost.
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS at the Finborough Theatre
Reviewed on 17th May 2024
by Auriol Reddaway
Photography by Tim Morozzo
Previously reviewed at this venue:
BANGING DENMARK | ★★★ | April 2024
FOAM | ★★★★ | April 2024
JAB | ★★★★ | February 2024
THE WIND AND THE RAIN | ★★★ | July 2023
SALT-WATER MOON | ★★★★ | January 2023
PENNYROYAL | ★★★★ | July 2022
THE STRAW CHAIR | ★★★ | April 2022
THE SUGAR HOUSE | ★★★★ | November 2021
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS
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