Stacey Cullen makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut this year with her insightful production of Scent. Both written and performed by Stacey, this solo show takes you on a journey of one person’s experience with grief, regret and the sudden loss of a significant other.
The show rotates around three staged areas of her loved ones wardrobe, bread making and the chair she slumps into with her bottle of wine. Beginning with an upbeat dance to Bowie’s Modern Love, the performance depicts a before and after of how drastically life can change.
Scent is deeply honest. It bares all in a storytelling sense. Almost as though Stacey has ripped out the pages of her diary and read them aloud. Her descriptions of first meeting someone who comes to exist underneath her skin to losing that same person portray real heartbreak.
It cleverly pivots around scent and how humans are the only creatures who associate scent with emotion. Their love of baking bread, burning rubber from the accident and petrichor, once meaning happiness but ironically in the air and on his lips the night that he dies.
There are few twists and turns to this tale, it is more of a window into one person’s world. But it is honest. It is deep. It is performed with human emotion. ‘In all likelihood there is nothing else’ she says, removing needed hope. This is a scent that will linger.
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 edfestmag.com
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