MARK FISHER admires Matthew Zajac’s interweaving of the personal and the historical in his new one-man show

MATTHEW ZAJAC'S father used to tell a story about how to catch a fox. The method is to get the creature in the open then circle it. As long as you complete the circle, the fox will stay grounded. Then you spiral inwards and take your prey.

Zajac does something similar to his father. In The Tailor of Inverness (or Krawiec z Inverness), the writer and actor slowly closes in on the Polish-born Zajac senior, giving him enough space to tell his life story in his own way, but not so much room that the old man escapes, fox-like, with his distortions, evasions and rewriting of history.

The one-man show for the Inverness company Dogstar is at once a son's affectionate tribute to a man who maintained his generous spirit despite suffering the privations of war and exile, and a level-headed analysis of how the great movements of history shape us into the people we are.

The play is being showcased on the Edinburgh Fringe before a Highlands tour next year, which will be very much worth catching. By rights, it should be a part of the Edinburgh International Festival, so closely does it fit in with artistic director Jonathan Mills’ theme about borders.

Zajac's father was born in a part of Poland that became the Ukraine, was drafted into the armies of both Communist Russia and Nazi Germany and fled – depending on whose story you believe – across most of Europe before settling in Glasgow and finally Inverness. Even before the added poignancy of the personal discoveries made by the actor after his father's death, the story brilliantly encapsulates the effects of war on individuals, families and societies across place and time.

Under the direction of Ben Harrison – famed for his site-specific work with Edinburgh's Grid Iron company – Zajac proves a compelling storyteller, capturing the fractured English and have-a-go enthusiasm of his father before weaving himself into an increasingly layered narrative.

As the truth becomes less and less certain, so the fracturing impact of the war grows more tangible, lending this touching personal story the grand metaphorical weight of 20th century history. All this and live fiddle too.

© Mark Fisher, 2008

Links

• Dogstar Theatre
• Tailor of Inverness info at Assembly
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog