The Tailor's Ghost by Gareth Durasow
The Tailor’s Ghost by Gareth Durasow
The Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield
Wednesday 4th February
“Who’s there?”
Not Old Hamlet. Not this time. Rather, it is the recently deceased father of the tailor commenting from beyond the grave on the business and the trade he has left his son. His golden rules are recalled:
“Never be seen with your tape measure around your neck…it makes you look a twat.”
So begins this one-hour monologue incorporating a radio playing and disjointed voices heard over a telephone.
It is a brave move to stage this amongst a bare set of Dickensian gloom featuring two mannequins, a jacket rail and an assortment of tailoring paraphernalia but The Tailor’s Ghost, written and directed by Gareth Durasow, is an audacious piece of writing and it easily meets the challenge.
Meets the challenge in a context of English drama being in crisis with reduced opportunities for actors and new writing. The Tailor’s Ghost and the Festival of Northern Writing at the Lawrence Batley Theatre prove though that all is not lost. Credit here to the energy of Phil Stokes, associate artist of LBT, whose creative vision and championing of Durasow, facilitated the whole event, so successfully that two further performances were arranged firstly for Harrogate Theatre and then for Leeds Library as part of the Leeds Literature Festival. This review is based on an attendance at all three performances.
From the play’s beginning, wit and mastery of stagecraft are evident. The empty space is indeed transformed as the stumbling tailor fully commands the attention of the audience thanks to an astonishingly compelling performance from Lee Bainbridge.
Bainbridge is the crumpled cardigan-wearing tailor making his entrance through a row of hanging jackets into the unprepossessing set. An apparently incongruous rugby commentary plays on a radio before it suddenly changes to Harry Seacome singing If I Ruled the World with its plaintive set of lyrics about yearning, aspirations, and what might be. No-one is in any doubt about how far away the tailor is from ruling the world but he continues to bumble around attending to a mannequin and not acknowledging the audience, not at least until the music stops and he launches into those Golden Rules of Tailoring as decreed by his late father, firstly, the aforementioned don’t drape a tape measure around your neck.
There is conflict between these two. The father derides the son and damns him with faint praise,
“Could do with the shoulders squaring. Otherwise, perfectly adequate.”
Such is the needle (pun intended) between these two that the son responds by stating that the joke is on the father because the suit he made for him to be buried in is three-eighths of an inch too long in the sleeve and it is made out of polyester,
“So, what’s left of him is probably still wearing it.”
This interplay fails to conceal the perilous financial state of the business which has prompted suicidal thoughts in the young tailor so acute that he does indeed wrap a tape measure around his neck as a grim representation of a noose. This bleak turn arrives with a sudden heft after a series of bathetic remarks, jokes, and anecdotes which frequently descend into the scatological. And never were so many knob jokes packed into an hour of drama to such humorous effect. They are welcome jokes though to set against the symbols of threat: the damage-wreaking moths, the telephone calls bringing about cancelled orders and the perpetual worry about swallowing pins.
Emotional defences are down when the father finally says,
“You’re my son… when you hurt, I hurt,”
and the son takes us on a tour of his imaginary tailor’s shop where the pair of them work together and where it is absolutely clear that,
“These two blokes here know what they’re doing.”
The picture of the father and son partnered in co-operative expertise breaches a wall of emotional reserve, and the introduction of an imaginary little girl, clever and busy, and doting on her grandfather, compounds the effect. Writing skills of the highest order are once more on show along with a disciplined eye on any trace of over-sentimentality. As when we hear the final description of the little girl:
“Apple of your eye, pain of your arse.”
We have been allowed in to the tailor’s dreams; but against yearning, and aspirations and a song about ruling the world, we are on the fast track to doom and gloom.
Or are we? The reprise of If I Ruled the World reminds us of the earlier rugby commentary on the radio and the fact that we are watching this play in the northern heartlands of Rugby League. When the last telephone call arrives, it brings an order for twenty-three jackets to be made for a visit to Wembley.
That’s it! Salvation in the form of twenty-three jackets! From Gareth Durasow’s regional voice, his universal vision and vibrant writing, we have the small flame of hope. Or if you prefer, the golden thread of optimism.
Except that we don’t. This is an evolving piece of drama and between the first and the third presentation, that disciplined eye asserts itself and the order for twenty-three jackets gets dropped. Optimists beware; in this scenario it is the dramatist who rules the world and Durasow’s take on the human condition is that feel-good warmth has to be pared back, and those of a romantic or sentimental disposition do indeed get stitched up.
Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence here that King Brilliant Theatre, the theatre group recently formed by Bainbridge, has the potential to create more thought-provoking and stimulating drama, and future events are indeed being planned. If you are anywhere in the vicinity of these future events as they emerge, then don’t miss out. And remember: never put a pin in your mouth.
John Irving Clarke
The Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield
Wednesday 4th February
“Who’s there?”
Not Old Hamlet. Not this time. Rather, it is the recently deceased father of the tailor commenting from beyond the grave on the business and the trade he has left his son. His golden rules are recalled:
“Never be seen with your tape measure around your neck…it makes you look a twat.”
So begins this one-hour monologue incorporating a radio playing and disjointed voices heard over a telephone.
It is a brave move to stage this amongst a bare set of Dickensian gloom featuring two mannequins, a jacket rail and an assortment of tailoring paraphernalia but The Tailor’s Ghost, written and directed by Gareth Durasow, is an audacious piece of writing and it easily meets the challenge.
Meets the challenge in a context of English drama being in crisis with reduced opportunities for actors and new writing. The Tailor’s Ghost and the Festival of Northern Writing at the Lawrence Batley Theatre prove though that all is not lost. Credit here to the energy of Phil Stokes, associate artist of LBT, whose creative vision and championing of Durasow, facilitated the whole event, so successfully that two further performances were arranged firstly for Harrogate Theatre and then for Leeds Library as part of the Leeds Literature Festival. This review is based on an attendance at all three performances.
From the play’s beginning, wit and mastery of stagecraft are evident. The empty space is indeed transformed as the stumbling tailor fully commands the attention of the audience thanks to an astonishingly compelling performance from Lee Bainbridge.
Bainbridge is the crumpled cardigan-wearing tailor making his entrance through a row of hanging jackets into the unprepossessing set. An apparently incongruous rugby commentary plays on a radio before it suddenly changes to Harry Seacome singing If I Ruled the World with its plaintive set of lyrics about yearning, aspirations, and what might be. No-one is in any doubt about how far away the tailor is from ruling the world but he continues to bumble around attending to a mannequin and not acknowledging the audience, not at least until the music stops and he launches into those Golden Rules of Tailoring as decreed by his late father, firstly, the aforementioned don’t drape a tape measure around your neck.
There is conflict between these two. The father derides the son and damns him with faint praise,
“Could do with the shoulders squaring. Otherwise, perfectly adequate.”
Such is the needle (pun intended) between these two that the son responds by stating that the joke is on the father because the suit he made for him to be buried in is three-eighths of an inch too long in the sleeve and it is made out of polyester,
“So, what’s left of him is probably still wearing it.”
This interplay fails to conceal the perilous financial state of the business which has prompted suicidal thoughts in the young tailor so acute that he does indeed wrap a tape measure around his neck as a grim representation of a noose. This bleak turn arrives with a sudden heft after a series of bathetic remarks, jokes, and anecdotes which frequently descend into the scatological. And never were so many knob jokes packed into an hour of drama to such humorous effect. They are welcome jokes though to set against the symbols of threat: the damage-wreaking moths, the telephone calls bringing about cancelled orders and the perpetual worry about swallowing pins.
Emotional defences are down when the father finally says,
“You’re my son… when you hurt, I hurt,”
and the son takes us on a tour of his imaginary tailor’s shop where the pair of them work together and where it is absolutely clear that,
“These two blokes here know what they’re doing.”
The picture of the father and son partnered in co-operative expertise breaches a wall of emotional reserve, and the introduction of an imaginary little girl, clever and busy, and doting on her grandfather, compounds the effect. Writing skills of the highest order are once more on show along with a disciplined eye on any trace of over-sentimentality. As when we hear the final description of the little girl:
“Apple of your eye, pain of your arse.”
We have been allowed in to the tailor’s dreams; but against yearning, and aspirations and a song about ruling the world, we are on the fast track to doom and gloom.
Or are we? The reprise of If I Ruled the World reminds us of the earlier rugby commentary on the radio and the fact that we are watching this play in the northern heartlands of Rugby League. When the last telephone call arrives, it brings an order for twenty-three jackets to be made for a visit to Wembley.
That’s it! Salvation in the form of twenty-three jackets! From Gareth Durasow’s regional voice, his universal vision and vibrant writing, we have the small flame of hope. Or if you prefer, the golden thread of optimism.
Except that we don’t. This is an evolving piece of drama and between the first and the third presentation, that disciplined eye asserts itself and the order for twenty-three jackets gets dropped. Optimists beware; in this scenario it is the dramatist who rules the world and Durasow’s take on the human condition is that feel-good warmth has to be pared back, and those of a romantic or sentimental disposition do indeed get stitched up.
Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence here that King Brilliant Theatre, the theatre group recently formed by Bainbridge, has the potential to create more thought-provoking and stimulating drama, and future events are indeed being planned. If you are anywhere in the vicinity of these future events as they emerge, then don’t miss out. And remember: never put a pin in your mouth.
John Irving Clarke
