By, Anonymous
2 min read
ByAnonymous, Anonymous
The times are not just a-changing, they are changing faster than ever. So for those who may be having difficulty keeping up - everyone over 16 - there is a reassuring lesson in this absorbing portrait of life in the basement workshop of a classy London tailors: It was ever thus.
Rather like Arnold Wesker whose The Kitchen was inspired by the job he did before becoming one of the Royal Court Theatre's Angry Young Men, Michael Hastings also drew on the work he did before he produced his best known pieces, most famously Tom and Viv about T S Eliot and his wife Vivienne. Although, unlike Wesker, the result of Hasting's formative experience has apparently sat in a drawer since he wrote it in 1973. You can see why.
Set 20 years earlier in dour, post-war London, it must have seemed like an ill-timed reminiscence in the '70s, a peace-time period that perhaps more than any other lived so utterly in the moment. But rather like the suits made by Hastings's Jewish tailor Spijak Wazki, a master craftsman whose every stitch in every seam is threaded by hand, this play is built to last.
In Tricia Thorn's classy production, the next work-bench down from Spijack's is used by Eric, a tailor who has embraced the sewing machine and can therefore run up a suit at twice the speed of his old-school neighbour.
Also present are the tailor's ill-treated "kippers" (Alexis Caley and Abigail Thaw) the female assistants who were so called because they sought work in pairs to avoid unwelcome advances. Although that is not a problem in the case of widower Spijack whose kipper Sydie is also his daughter.
The banter here is all between the two tailors. Eric is always on at Spijack about how much he earns; Spijack is always on at Eric about the inferior suits he produces. Eric is a "butcher" says Spijack, although Spijak has some aliases of his own, including ''that bloody tyrant'' to his long-suffering apprentice Maurice (James El-Sharawy) the 17-year-old "boy" who is clearly a version of Hastings himself.
But what drives the story is the pressure brought about by change. As the raging Spijak, a terrific Andy de la Tour, conjures the bewildered resentment felt by a master craftsman made redundant by an inferior product. There is also great support from Paul Rider as the smugly bourgeois Eric who is more proud of the mahogany record player he can afford than the suits he makes.
You can see how, in the plasticised 1970s, a play that values that which is hand-made must have seemed redundant, much like Spijak himself. But today it feels as if this delayed world premiere has come at just the right time - a time when, despite, or because of all the manufactured trash out there, we have rediscovered the value of not just beautiful things but of things made beautifully.
Or, put another way, we have remembered to feel not just the width but also the quality.