A short, moving piece of theatre that showcases serious talent.
The Seamstress is a short, powerful performance piece exploring womanhood, sisterhood and motherhood through the lens of a familiar Scottish folklore story. The selkie, the mystical seals who can shed their skins and become human women on land, is used to dive into a complex web of themes spanning what it means to be a woman, both now and in the past.
The inter-generational tale is framed by a more contemporary storyline: a young woman recounting a recurring dream of her childhood. The dream blends into the central story of a selkie woman, unable to find her seal pelt and trapped on land after she and her selkie sisters go ashore to dance on the one night of the year they can safely set foot on land. When she is unable to find her skin and return to the ocean, her sisters go without her. She is taken in by a fisherman, housed, clothed, and taught the ways of human life. Eventually she is embraced by the village’s women, who work during the day mending fishing nets, and taught the skill. She forms bonds with the women, explores her senses and desire with the fisherman, and experiences motherhood through the birth of her daughter. However, as being on land begins to take its toll, her body suffers, her fisherman is revealed to not be all she believed, and the sea calls her back more and more powerfully.
The set was almost completely bare, and scene changes were delivered mainly through handheld lights, which worked beautifully to show location, time of day, and mood. Costuming was similarly simple but effective – villagers, including the stranded selkie woman, wear simple knits and denim – warm, sturdy and natural – while the selkies wear layers of undergarments – tights, fishnets, leggings, corsets, leotards – all in fleshy and earthy colours, torn and slashed in a way that is evocative without being sexual, both natural and strange at the same time, which emphasises the body and its movement above all else. The selkies’ skins were simple organza lengths wrapped into draped skirts which slipped gracefully on and off for the selkie’s shore dance.
The cast is impressive, with particular praise due to the two arguable leads – Manon Vernier, who embodies a graceful difference and subtly perceptible discomfort as the selkie woman, and Gina McTeague as the character that frames the story, who delivers several heart-wrenching monologues and straddles the past and present with clarity and vulnerability.
However, the real strength of the piece is in the writing; it is clear and concise without feeling heavy-handed. It flows seamlessly, with neither dead space nor a breathless pacing that could leave it feeling rushed. The script repeats and reworks key ideas, but never so obviously as to feel patronising, instead emphasising and recontextualising key messages in a way that allows the audience to arrive at their own interpretations of their meanings.
The only part that felt incongruous was the music in the selkie shore dance sequence. The style of dance itself was surprising, for we all have an image of magical women dancing gracefully, as if they are being watched – on the contrary, this dance was loose, free, animalistic and almost chaotic – but this worked well as a departure from the long-established image of mystical women being inherently alluring or seductive. However, the brash electronic score in this section felt slightly jarring, and stood out against the mostly earthy feeling of the rest of the play.
The play taps into the all-too-familiar (for many women) feeling of being out of place, of “not quite fitting,” (a recurring line in the show), and societal pressures to be a wife, a mother, to dress and behave in a certain way, and how female friendships can be the most liberating thing in the world. Overall, this is a very impressive little play that packs a hell of a punch. It’s an hour very well spent; one where women may feel seen, heard and understood, and men might learn something about what it feels like to live in a woman’s body.
The Seamstress is on until the 3rd of November, 2026.