The strength of this refreshingly original and subtly chilling production is the evocation of an almost overwhelming sense of the uncanny.
The breath of life becomes the horror of death
From the Not So Nice Theatre Company, written by Charlotte Smith and directed by Grace Barker, the play is set in the Victorian era and tells the gothic story of the new, much younger, wife of Lord Swinton who has been sent by her husband to sit as a model for an Anatomical Venus. While she is understandably reluctant, the sculptor, Miss Abanathy, has hidden reasons for insisting the project goes ahead...
The stage performances are supplemented by strikingly effective video projections of Miss Abanathy’s dreams. Or are they dreams shared with Lady Swinton? Or is the dreamer being controlled by the dreams of another?
Eleanor Tate as Miss Abernathy and Grace Baker as Lady Swinton deftly navigate the dichotomies in each role as they swing between comedy of manners to class battles, privilege to secret victimhood, enmity to amity, controller to controlled, daytime to dreamtime. Oscillation between, and the merging of states is very effectively and creepily portrayed: dreams invade waking hours, the breath of life becomes the horror of death.
I have a quibble with the language, which sometimes uses modern phrases that jar with the Victorian setting – though given the dreamlike feeling of the production, this is not too distracting.
More of an issue is that the play is stuffed with enough themes and subplots to service about six separate plays. In an atmospheric piece such as this, not everything needs to be resolved, but there is one major subplot in particular that, frustratingly, seems to be forgotten about, and subsequently spoils the play’s focus.
Despite this, the invaluable gift of the production is that when you leave the theatre you carry that delicious feeling of the uncanny with you out into the streets of the night.
