“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”– so said American writer, humorist and essayist Mark Twain. Within the sphere of psychiatry, patterns of behaviour are sometimes said to pass down to family members, albeit in a ‘mutated’ form. And so it is that these ideas surface in Julia Pagett’s Stitch In Time – raised repeatedly by one character, but not in the spirit of understanding and reconciliation…
Directed by Luke Adamson, Stitch In Time revolves around Ellis (Joshua Glenister), a young man who has ambitions to be an architect. A chance encounter with Tara (Julia Pagett) at a gig proves to be a life-changing moment – altering not only the career trajectory of Ellis’s life, Tara insists on probing the idiosyncrasies of his parents (and his relationship to them), which he has always shied away from.
Tonally, Ellis’s parents wouldn’t be out of place in an Alan Ayckbourn play – suburban characters who beneath the obvious comedic elements, hide their respective feelings of loneliness and the buried thoughts of the past. The father, Alan (Jonathan Kemp) is particularly funny – stemming from the fact that the character is earnest in his comments, even when the conversation takes an absurdist turn. His wife Marjorie (Rowena Bentley) is more forthright speaking about what’s worrying her and less bothered if the neighbours hear her – though she isn’t by any means a harridan.
Over the course of the play, Marjorie is increasingly frustrated by Alan, which invites the obvious questions: how did they become a couple in the first place and what do they have in common anyway? These questions are also appropriate to Tara and Ellis’s relationship and on first glance, it would be easy to assume that in their case, opposites attract. Certainly, from a Jungian perspective, the couple display classic traits that conform to ‘anima’ and ‘animas’ – Ellis displaying sensitivity and emotional intelligence, while Tara is sassy, confident and without inhibitions. However, the one thing she is reluctant to do is ‘let her guard down’ and be emotionally vulnerable.
Repeatedly we hear from Tara that Ellis ISN’T emotionally intelligent, and that his parents and their behaviour are abnormal. Of course, this is gaslighting behaviour – projecting one’s own faults on to others. But what is the audience in general meant to feel about Tara?
Undoubtedly, Tara isn’t beholden to society’s standards of ‘polite behaviour’, which not only irks Ellis at certain points in the play, but also his mother who is alarmed at how intensely she dislikes Tara. In contrast, Alan’s behaviour doesn’t now seem so bad…
In many ways, Tara is a modern day ‘Hedda Gabler’ – someone who gets pleasure from influencing others and taunting Ellis about his personal shortcomings (and those of his parents). While there is some ‘truth’ in what she says, her comments don’t stem from detached observation or solicited advice. If anything, Tara delights in using her words as ‘weapons’ to shock and hurt others. She also at times displays insecurity about being ‘trapped’ and where you would normally expect empathy, the absence of it.
But before we make the assumption that Tara was born ‘damaged goods’, the play mentions fleetingly that there is no mother or father in her life, and perhaps never has been. In hostile environments growing up, Tara’s behaviour could be interpreted as a defence mechanism…
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” In the case of the play’s sequence of events, the scenes take place backwards and forwards in time – leaving it to the audience to deduce whether the characters’ behaviour are based on ‘facts’, what they feel or what they’ve pieced together over time. However, it is only by the play’s denouement that we have greater clarity of the bigger picture and blame is not so clear cut…
© Michael Davis 2026
Stitch In Time ran at the Drayton Arms Theatre from 3rd to 7th March. It also runs at the Bridge House Theatre from 24th March to 4th April.
Breaking The Fourth Wall 