"The Fabric of a Life"
The Brits Off Broadway Festival at 59E59 Theaters
begins with the potently effective THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS, Matthew Zajac’s solo
play. It combines the autobiographical stream of consciousness ruminations of Mr.
Zajac’s father, Mateusz, the tailor of the title, with the son’s
straightforward narrative documentary exposition of his search for his family
roots. Like so many persons displaced by the upheavals of war, whether it be one
of the World Wars or any of those now roiling Africa, the Middle East, and
elsewhere, Mr. Zajac’s father endured unbelievable hardship when forced to
leave his homeland and loved ones, ending up somewhere totally unexpected, and
leaving the mysteries of his experiences behind for his offspring to unravel.
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| Matthew Zajac. Photo: Tim Morozzo. |
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| Matthew Zajac. Photo: Tim Morozzo. |
Matthew Zajac, a trim middle-aged man dressed simply
in white shirt, tie, and slacks, plays both his father (with eyeglasses) and
himself (without); a violinist (Aidan O’Rourke) on a rolling stool in an
upstage corner accompanies the entire performance (original music by Jonny
Hardie and Gavin Marwick), some of which includes Polish songs that Zajac
sings. The setting (by Ali Maclaurin, also credited as the costume designer) is
a tailor’s table set with scissors, needles, and thread, and a blueish rear
wall into which garments seem to have been compressed; a girl’s dress from the
1940s hangs on the wall as well. There’s also a tailor’s female dummy and a rolling,
metal clothing rack with World War II military jackets hanging on it, as well
as two white children’s shirts. The backdrop also serves as a screen for the
projections of subtitles for Polish-language sequences and lyrics, as well as
for maps, stills, and videos (video designs by Tim Reid).
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| Matthew Zajac. Photo: Tim Morozzo. |
Mateusz (Polish for Matthew) Zajac was born and raised
in a melting-pot part of Poland called Galicia that the redrawn map of Europe later
placed in the Ukraine. Speaking in a Polish-Scottish accent, he recounts his
experiences (including romantic ones) after war broke out in 1939 and he joined
the army; he was sent hither and yon through such far-flung places as Ukraine,
Russia, Persia (as Iran was known), Iraq, Egypt, North Africa, and Italy. During
the war he found himself forced to join one nation’s army after the other, including the Nazi army, and
also endured forced labor on a Russian collective farm. He was a dehumanized
cog, now here, now there, never told what was happening but expected to fulfill
whatever obligations were put upon him, like the sequence of military jackets
from different countries—including Germany—he dons one after the other at one
point. (He brings to mind the title character in The Good Soldier Švejk, also
spelled Schweik or Schwejk, Jaroslav
Hašek’s famous antiwar
novel.) Finally, he wound up in Glasgow, Scotland, after which,
following numerous peregrinations in Scotland, he settled in Inverness and had
a successful career as a tailor and raised a family.
Mr. Zajac tells his father’s story circuitously,
inserting himself into it every now and then, introducing songs, and
illustrating the route his father’s travels and travails took him through by
the use of animated maps (too unfocused and crowded with data to follow very
closely). Matthew, eventually anxious to fill in the gaps in his father’s
story, decides to find out for himself as much as he can of what really
happened, and he goes on his own journey into the past, obtaining official
military records of his father’s activities, and even traveling to the Ukraine
to meet surviving family members. What he learns reveals that what his father
told him wasn’t entirely true, but that what actually did happen—including the
tailor’s fathering of Matthew’s hitherto unknown half-sister—was actually more
dramatic, if possible. The struggle to discover his father’s identity (and, by
extension, his own) in a confusing landscape of mixed national, linguistic,
cultural, and religious factors, is the same one so many diasporic wanderers
continue to experience.
Mr. Zajac offers a quicksilver, physically adept
performance of many colors and emotions; his rhythms constantly changing, along
with his volume, he is continuously engaging. The staging has him go through
many arduous activities, including doing pushups when commanded to do so by a
nasty Wehrmacht officer. He handles clothing in a way that brings it to life, at
one point making a garment in his hands seem to breathe. Much of his
effectiveness can be attributed to the imaginative way director Harrison makes
even the limited props at his disposal theatrical, like the clothing rack that
Mr. Zajac wheels rapidly about in one scene, or the military jackets in which
he dances. The tailor’s dummy also comes alive in lovely ways, as Mr. Zajac
dances with it or drapes it with a pink scarf to represent several young women
in turn.
This year is the 70th anniversary of the
ending of World War II and, by extension, the Holocaust. THE TAILOR OF
INVERNESS is, in its own way, a Holocaust story (like two recent plays recalling
that horrific history, THE HAPPY END and JANKA). Jews made up 90% of the
tailoring trade in Galicia and would have been responsible for training
Mateusz; there’s even a moment when the tailor, a Roman Catholic, puts on one
signifying armband after the other as he questions which best identifies him:
Ukranian? Russian? Pole? He then picks up a cloth yellow Star of David,
pondering it for a moment, almost as if to suggest that, in a way, he too is a
Jew, before putting it down again.
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS is packed with important
historical information about the Galician experience of World War II. Sometimes
this goes adrift amid the multiple threads woven together in the fabric of the tailor’s
story, but soon enough you’re reengaged in the tailor’s remarkable tale. Perhaps
your own family history has a story similarly worth telling.
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS
59E59 Theaters
59 E. 59 Street, NYC
Through May 3
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS
59E59 Theaters
59 E. 59 Street, NYC
Through May 3
