The Tailor of Inverness

Meet Mateusz Zajac. Gentle yet dynamic, bright and cheerful, but also explosively temperamental, ponderous yet given to singing and dancing, he is a spinner of yarns and a tailor with a difference. A Polish immigrant, settled in Scotland since 1948, he is also a devoted husband and father, and a successful businessman – by all the standards of his own time, a respectable and honourable man.

Nestling in between such classics as Sophie's Choice and Secrets and Lies, Matthew Zajac's story about his father is full of contradictions – it is both familiar and unpredictable, challenging yet funny, epic but also profoundly moving. Immersed at the deep end of raw emotion, family history and life-changing discovery, Zajac is at times overly ambitious with how much he can fit into 75 minutes, but he has a fine collaborator in Grid Iron's director Ben Harrison, who helps to shape his creation theatrically.

As a result, their own tailoring is more about the stitching than the cutting, but even though at times the piece comes across as a patchwork quilt dressing coat rather than a piece of catwalk couture, it is warm, comforting and colourful. It carries heart-rending poems in hidden pockets and you should definitely try it on.