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	Whitespace (venue website) Theatre 1-6, 8-13, 15-16, 18-20, 22-26 Aug, 5:15pm-6:15pm
Recommended for age 16+ only.

Let’s get the attention-grabbing bit out of the way: this play is set in a life art class.  In fact, this play is a life art class – with the audience invited to sketch actor Sue MacLaine, as she recalls the intriguing history of the late model Henrietta Moraes.  “Draw me now, and steal my soul,” runs one line… and when Still Life premiered in Brighton last year, most critics agreed it lent a remarkable focus to an equally striking tale.

Moraes’ story is surely worth telling.  Bohemian icon, multiple divorcee, and muse to both Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, a portrait of her sold for more than £20 million in February this year.  But her life was also filled with both alcohol and drug abuse; and she died penniless in 1999, reportedly while telling jokes, and survived by a faithful dachshund.

An award-winner for innovation at 2011’s Brighton Fringe, Still Life promises an intriguing and highly personal insight into the relationship between artist and muse.  It may not be for the faint-hearted: hosted in a real-life art gallery, you’re very much expected to take part by drawing the series of poses which punctuate MacLaine’s monologue.  Overcome the self-consciousness, though, and this should be an experience unlike any other – which is no mean feat, in a Fringe that sometimes feels like it’s seen everything before.