How well do you know your parents? Especially if they come from the shifting borders of Eastern Europe. From the borderlands of Europe, Poland and Ukraine, caught between Hitler’s and Stalin’s ambitions, between lifelong rivalry, nationalism and intermarriage…
Survival was the name of the game wherever the wind blew you, into whichever army, the Wehrmacht, the Polish army with the British, the Soviet. Otherwise it's the gulag in Uzbekistan and worse. And here we are again, with Ukraine besieged. How the wheel turns. ‘Circling the fox’.
A timely ‘true’ story of Mateusz Zajac undertaken by his adult actor son Matthew, who has made a dynamic solo drama from it, piecing it together after his father’s death in 1992, unravelling the fact from the fiction. There are many tales like this from that time, people hiding in plain sight. Many books have been written on the subject.
How do you reinvent yourself, assimilate into a new culture, leave the old life behind, create a fiction of a credible past, and a new family in a new country? Spies do it… undercover policemen do it… But here it’s personal. Can Matthew ever get to the core of the man, understand his hidden traumas? Never look back is the usual strategy. His father was happy in Scotland.
To discover his father had a wife and daughter in Poland, a Poland he had to erase from his life, displacement in more ways than one, makes for a good yarn and an interesting psychological study, as he embodies his father, the tailor of Inverness. Of course, after 1992, after the Communist yoke had lifted, Matthew was able to visit Poland and meet family, his half sister, visit graves.
Matthew Zajac, playwright and actor (forty-two years in the game) and artistic director of Dogstar, brings his talents to the snug, fifty-seater Finborough. In his father’s Polish (surtitles projected against the back wall), his father’s Polish-accented Scottish accent, and his own, he gives a vivid performance.
Mood music, a bit of ethnic Polish / Ukrainian folk song, a bit of Scottish jig, played on violin by Jonny Hardie (music by Jonny Hardie and Gavin Marwick, sound by Timothy Brinkhurst), marks the chapters of his life—not in chronological order but in the organic way we tell our tales, patchworks of memory: two Christmases, the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox, village life (the Galician Polish village, aptly named ’stagnant waters’, is now in Ukraine), remembered names, people who fought for the Vlasov army, Nazi sympathisers, Ukrainian nationalists. All murdering each other, but teenagers were the worst.
A tailor’s worktable at the side, a multipurpose clothes rail (simulating train journeys) centre back hung with military jackets for his quick character changes. A ghostly white backcloth of calico and muslin toiles with a little girl’s dress; at the side is a tailor’s dummy, brought into play with a variously tied scarf round its headless neck. Imaginative, economical, Zajac plays many parts.
Incarnating his father’s tall tales, some versions of the truth, he plays the boy in the forest scared of wolves, the wily peasant telling us how to trap a fox in a circle—using his tailor’s huge scissors. He plots his father’s convoluted journeys on a map behind him, his escape routes via many surrounding countries. Hiding in the woods from the war, he thinks of mushroom picking.
In his father’s voice, he tells how he came to be in Inverness via Glasgow. Finally, he has found his safe place and become a pillar of the society, but who is he in his head? Backwards and forwards his son explores every lead, weighs up what he was told, tries to surmise. But, though we can imagine, how close can we get to the truth, even with the people who knew him… it is all relative. We are elusive creatures.
Old photos are studied, a family tree is built up, films show the places he has traced, but who is he? Does he know himself? Does he wear his Polish armband, his Ukrainian one—one on each arm—the Star of David he leaves in his box of mementoes... hmm…. So what was he… a Pole on his father’s side, a Ukrainian on his mother’s? Apparently the children of these mixed marriages were Polish if a boy, Ukrainian if a girl.
There is a useful historical timeline in the programme, Polish history from the eighteenth century on, Russian then Prussian rule, trying to eradicate Polish culture, as Russia is trying to do now in Ukraine. There is poetry, nostalgia, and maybe resolution.
Directed by Ben Harrison, set and costume Ali Maclaurin, lighting Kai Fischer, it is a fascinating eighty minutes, even if you know its historical terrain. If you don’t, then it's worth a look and a listen. From a farm in Galicia to Inverness is quite a winding road.
The Tailor of Inverness, “after 16+ years, 300+ performances in 12 countries and 40,000+ audience members worldwide, Matthew Zajac’s internationally acclaimed one-man show” is “part of the Finborough’s Theatre’s #VoicesFromUkraine #Українськіголоси #Ukrayinsʹkiholosy, a programming strand set up in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine”.