★★★

“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 WETSUITMAN at the Arcola Theatre

★★★

“Without fanfare, it delivers a sensitive, real portrayal of grief, anger and loss.”

The Wetsuitman begins as a farce. The three actors metatheatrically ponder who their characters are to be, settling on caricatures from a send up of a Nordic Noir. In this, The Wetsuitman begins as one thing we think we know, so long as you religiously watched The Killing a decade ago. But by the final scene 80 minutes later, we are a world away from a comforting murder mystery and are forced to face the stark, human consequences of the alienation of refugees across Europe.

This is a true and extraordinary story, translated to stage with some brave directorial choices. The four scenes are almost better understood as vignettes, and while occasionally confusing, telling a story this vast with just three actors and three orange chairs on an otherwise bare stage is certainly an achievement.

The play, written by Freek Mariën and translated by David McKay, borrows heavily from an article by journalist Anders Fjellberg, published in Norwegian paper Dagbladet. Reading that piece this morning, I recognised many of the lines from the stage. These verbatim quotes give the play heart, with idiosyncratic comments and unfiltered observations that can be profound, prejudiced and humourous in turn.

Each scene, from bumbling detectives on a Norwegian coastline, to a mourning family in Syria, has a significantly different theatrical direction (Trine Garrett). The piece lends itself to this patchwork style, with no single character serving as an anchor throughout. However, this sometimes meant I had to keep checking my notes and the cast list to keep up. For example, in the second scene, the cast switches between fourteen different talking heads, many of which are simply credited as ‘another salesperson’. It’s not a surprise that some of these are more distinct than others.

The tone changes again in the third scene which is set in the Calais Jungle refugee camp and for the only time in the piece, the actors are amplified with microphones. Only their voices are used to guide the audience through the Jungle, as Nikiforos Fintzos’ sound and Amy Daniel’s lighting throughout is kept minimal. Bringing out the microphones felt like an unnecessary and fussy addition; I half expected they would augment singing, or some other vocal effects that never came.

All stagey conventions and tech fall away by the final scene, which features excellent naturalistic acting from the cast of three – David Djemal, Eugenia Low and Youness Bouzinab. Without fanfare, it delivers a sensitive, real portrayal of grief, anger and loss.

Throughout the piece, significance is given to the role of the press in homage to investigative journalists behind the The Wetsuitman article. It was journalists who managed to solve this missing persons case when the authorities in Norway, the Netherlands, France and the UK could not recognise a person who ‘officially was not even here’. This point is for the most part subtly made, as the play keeps journalists off-stage, with their interviewees and sources only portrayed. Only a couple of times does the writing lean towards a larger conspiracy of ‘threats’ hanging over characters who speak to the press. This feels like a detraction from otherwise fair criticism of the inadequacies and apathy within the official investigative forces.

The Wetsuitman is a piece that lends itself to reflection and concentration. Though it was hard to pick out all the details live, after going back to the source material I was struck by how much was faithfully packed into the play. It might not have needed all of this, but I am glad they tried.

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 at the Finborough Theatre

Reviewed on 17th May 2024

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Tim Morozzo

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS

THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS

THE WETSUITMAN at the Arcola Theatre

★★★

“Without fanfare, it delivers a sensitive, real portrayal of grief, anger and loss.”