An over-stuffed plot fails to let great themes shine through
Nestled in the Banshee Labyrinth, described as Scotland’s most haunted pub, The Sculptor makes up one of the performances at Edinburgh’s Horror Festival, a 4 day mini-Edinburgh Fringe, entirely focused on the grisly and macabre. Seeing the play on Halloween, with many of the pub’s clientele and staff decked out in their spookiest costumes, creates a perfect atmosphere for a darkly spooky show – but it’s an atmosphere that The Sculptor doesn’t quite live up to.
The play centres on the creation of an anatomical wax model for study in Edinburgh’s medical school, being sculpted by an ambitious and hard-working doctor’s daughter (Miss Abernathy, played by Eleanor Tate), and based on the form of the new wife of the medical school’s rich patron (Lady Swinton, played by director Grace Baker). After a mutual mistrust, the two spend much time intimately together, with Miss Abernathy growing increasingly fixated on the model and her own work, and Lady Swinton revealing more of her inner life, and also to discover why the doctor himself isn’t making this model.
It’s difficult to write a summary of the plot of this show because there are just so many different stories and themes woven into such a short show (55 minutes), and yet so little actual emotional connection between the characters. A fair amount of the time is taken up by Miss Abernathy’s dreams of the model and Lady Swinton which play out as monologues in her mind, and even when the two do speak their conversation is often cut short by Abernathy’s Fleabag-esque asides to the audience, meaning the two struggle to form any real bond, and the audience is constantly perplexed by their relationship. This is further complicated by Lady Swinton’s sudden shifts into the personality of the anatomical model Abernathy dreams of, aggressive and darkly persuasive. Ironically, this character who we hear feels trapped in her life, unable to break out of the mould and be her true self, is denied the opportunity to even spend an hour’s performance in her own skin.
The cast members do what they can with a script that is more focused on style than substance – Grace Baker is compelling as Lady Swinton, desperate for connection and truth and yet rebuffed constantly by the brusque Miss Abernathy. She almost has a Nicole Scherzinger Norma Desmond moment in the show’s climax, in an inexplicably modern dress and covered in blood that is never fully explained. Eleanor Tate’s Abernathy is disappointingly monotonous for much of the piece, never quite as crazed with fixation as one would expect after days of sleep deprivation and hallucination. However, she creates good moments of comedy in the awkward first meetings of the women, highlighting their disparity in social status cheekily.
These themes of the show are what make it shine, and are what could make the climax so powerful. Neither of these women have power over their destiny though they’re having completely different struggles, and when it reflects reality it is powerful. To build a camaraderie between two women, only to have one fatally betrayed by the other in service of a model made to appease and please the men around them, is such a modern and relevant story, one that I believe the play wants to tell. But with all the other noise, it struggles to make itself heard.
Abernathy often repeats that seven layers make up the anatomical model – heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, stomach, womb. Yet The Sculptor would do well to strip away a few of those layers, and instead focus on what makes this story – two women, faced with the patriarchal expectations placed upon them, dealing with it in their own ways. Do you craft someone else’s image, or protect your own? And what happens when the two cannot coexist?