ScotsGay Magazine

***

Here we had, as the name implies, a series of interwoven threads designed to give us an overall picture. It juxtaposed religion and heroin addiction, the opium of the masses with, well, the opium of the masses. It set up warm hearted invocations of light and goodness, and cut them short in a hail of expletives. It sought always to keep the audience member guessing, and largely succeeded. Running through the twisting and turning and occasionally jarring scenes, the remarkably young cast demonstrated admirable acting ability and stamina, never once leaving the stage for the whole hour long performance. The choreography was well executed, and the minimalist stage and lighting fitted the text well. The daring decision to have an audience on all four sides gave a sense of constant revolution, though occasionally I felt I was only getting a quarter of a performance. Indeed, there’s is very little wrong with Tapestry as a performance, which is what left me a tad puzzled when I left that I hadn’t enjoyed it more. I think the key issue was a certain sense that what one was observing was less a play, and more a well executed theatre school exercise. The individual scenes were well done to be sure, but it takes truly monumental skill to draw on someone’s emotions in less than five minutes. There was a central thread, the blossoming romance of two characters, Cathy and Jim, who we drop in on at various points in their relationship. However I for one felt that so much more could have been made of this. I came out of the theatre after an enjoyable hour, but I wasn’t touched. I hadn’t laughed out loud or come to tears, I hadn’t been moved to exultation or indignation or anything else. And that’s what theatre is meant to do, it’s the trump card it holds over the technically brilliant but ever so distant media of film or television. And for all the flawless execution and dedication of the actors, that just didn’t happen for me.

Sam Wheeler

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