The Cutting of the Cloth

The work-room of a Savile Row tailors, 1953. Two master craftsmen at daggers drawn: Polish-born Spijak insists that nothing can beat the excellence of a hand-sewn suit, while Eric uses his machine to work at twice the speed and earn twice the money. Sparks fly as each fights his own corner with biting wit and vicious humour. Into this battleground steps Maurice, a teenager at the very start of his apprenticeship. Will he survive the gruelling training to become a master tailor? Or will he, as Spijak’s daughter urges him to, escape?

The Cutting of the Cloth, drawn so much from Hastings’s youthful experience as an apprentice tailor, has lain in a drawer. Now Two’s Company brings it rampaging on to the stage.

Michael Hastings (1937 - 2011) was the winner of two Emmy Awards, two BAFTAs, the Somerset Maugham Award and was nominated for an Oscar. His first play - Don’t Destroy Me - was produced when he was just 18 years old and he went on to become part of the first wave of new playwrights at George Devine’s Royal Court Theatre. He won the Evening Standard Award in 1979 for Gloo Joo, but remains best known for Tom and Viv, his 1984 play about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, first seen at the Royal Court Theatre, adapted into a film, and recently revived at the Almeida Theatre. He also wrote extensively for television and film including The American, starring Diana Rigg, and The Nightcomers, starring Marlon Brando. He also wrote novels, biographies, and libretti.