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LIFE

The Studio, Edinburgh

Three stars

 

Art, life, and the blurring between the two are at the heart of Maria MacDonell’s play, in which MacDonell plays Estelle, a model at a life drawing class run by The Artist. He is the sort of pompous ass whose grand statements seem to have stepped out of the 1950s. As he waits for Estelle, some of the audience sit at easels on the stage as surrogate class members, while those in regular seats are similarly given pencil and paper to sketch out their impressions if they wish. 

 

Only when Estelle arrives does The Artist’s high theory open up into flesh and blood material, as Estelle’s personal archive becomes crucial to her own art. This makes for an impressionistic and abstract self-portrait of bodies, ageing and a life that was once a blank canvas that has become shaded in by a life of incident and colour. 

 

Not since Jacques Rivette’s 1991 film, La Belle Noiseuse, has the relationship between maestro and muse been so exposed, albeit here with both considerably more clothes and even more brevity over LIFE’s sixty-five minutes. The result in Ben Harrison’s production of a show first seen on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and revived here for an extensive tour is an at times intense unravelling of different ways of seeing, as Estelle’s desire to be seen is thwarted by the male gaze that Leo MacNeill’s artist represents. 

 

As the pair spar, Estelle transcends her life of constant objectification to become a pin-up of sorts for older women like her. In a world that prefers the shock of the new rather than a more mature state of art, wisdom and experience make for a vivid road to immortality. 


The Herald, May 9th 2025

 

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