Brighton Year-Round 2024
Experiment With an Air Pump
New Venture Theatre, Brighton
Genre: Drama, Historical, Theatre
Venue: New Venture Theatre Upstairs
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
One house, one famous painting, two eves of new centuries. Sam Chittenden directs Shelagh Stephenson’s 1998 Experiment With an Air Pump at New Venture Theatre till April 27th.
Taking its name from Joseph Wright of Derby’s famous 1779 painting, Stephenson asks what might have lain behind it. And how those same ethical questions cracked in old oils might impact two centuries on. Uniquely in this production, there’s three musicians playing live behind the gauze screen in the finest NVT set since The York Realist.
One of the stand-out NVT productions of recent years. A must-see.
Directed by Sam Chittenden, Assistant Director Elysa Hyde, Musical Director Steve Hoar, Stage Manager Moon Berglind, Erin Burbridge, ASMs Richard Lock, Karl Petrie, Ollie Wilson
Set Design John Everett, Sam Chittenden
Lighting Design & Rigging Strat Mastoris, Sound & Projection Design Sam Chittenden, Animation Morgan Corby, Technical Support Apollo Videaux, Ian Black
Costume Design Millie Sutherland-Thorne, Costume Dressers Emi Salkeid, Millie Sutherland-Thorne, Flea Traini-Cobb, Claudia Ezraeelian, Hair & Make-Up Flea Traini-Cobb,
Set Construction & Set Painting Tomasz Baraniecki, Sam Beards, John Everett, Yulia Girina, Simon Glazier, Christine Hauschild, Parkash Kaur, George Walter
Chalk Illustrations Fiona Hewitt, Jean Parker, Prop Design and Making Karl Petrie, Jeremy Crow, Sam Chittenden
Lighting Operation Tamsin Mastoris, Sound Operation Cameron Davies, David Turton, Ollie Wilson, Voice Coaching Sam Feree, Fight Director Dodger Phillips, Props & Set Furniture Moon Berglind, Sam Chittenden, John Everett
Poster & Programme Tamsin Mastoris, Photography Strat Mastoris, Publicity Elysa Hyde, Marketing Media Ayshen Irfan, Health and Safety Ian Black.
With thanks to Stephen Stuckes, John Dutton, Edda Sharpe, Box Office FOH and Volunteers
Till April 27th
Review
One house, one famous painting, two eves of new centuries. Sam Chittenden directs Shelagh Stephenson’s 1998 Experiment With an Air Pump at New Venture Theatre till April 27th.
Taking its name from Joseph Wright of Derby’s famous 1779 painting, Stephenson asks what might have lain behind it. And how those same ethical questions cracked in old oils might impact two centuries on. Uniquely in this production, there’s three musicians playing live behind the gauze screen in the finest NVT set since The York Realist.
In 1799 the house literally flutters with scientific experiments. Egalitarian, even republican principles though are blind to the sidelining of women, despite the talk. There’s a dove, two scientists both keen on a young woman for different reasons, and two daughters bicker through farcical amateur dramatics. One didn’t want to write them but experiment instead; the other’s just discovered something more dramatic about her India-dwelling fiancé.
1999 ushers in chaos theory, cloning and here genetic engineering on live embryos. Four of the seven 1799 actors feature in 1999 with some role-reversals. The elimination of genetic defects before birth draws unconscious resonance with the past. And the cellar of the same house reveals just what that might be.
Echoes of Stoppard’s Arcadia five years earlier aren’t banished. But Stephenson’s darker, her detection work reveals to us if not the characters something more monstrous shrouded from nearly everyone.
The heart of the play’s in 1799. Here Jeremy Crow’s scientist Fenwick presides over an animation spectacle another actor Morgan Corby devises as we open on the living tableau of that painting, projected on two screens designed by Chittenden who also co-designed the set with John Everett as well as props. Millie Sutherland-Thorne’s 1799 costumes in particular are gorgeous.
In a bell-jar a dove apparently flutters out, its wings beat in the theatre: it’s spectacular. Behind the table and props a gauze screen hides the three musicians (Steve Hoar, Piano, Bertie Purchese Violin, Juliet Rowley Viola) playing folk tunes and period music snatches; even Auld Lang Syne.
There’s an elaborate mantlepiece and shelves of plates, fixtures painted dark green, with scientific scribbles in chalk (Fiona Hewitt, Jean Parker). With two exits and a sound system of riots off (Chittenden again) this set’s topped by Strat Mastoris’ lighting playing on gauze and with occasional blackouts.
Crow’s excellent at catching the sonorous avuncularity of Fenwick as he presides over his Newcastle home with benign cynicism, hoping revolution will blow away all distinctions. It’s a commanding performance.
Fenwick though neglects his poetry and music-loving wife Susannah (Laura Witham, a shuddering column of frustration and asides), who’s even read some Greek. It’s her physical perfection Fenwick fell in love with, he later confesses (there’s a resonance with another character).
Their daughters have enjoyed liberal, not satisfying educations. Harriet (ebullient in Maria Evans’ hands) possesses a sharp mind, but chafes at being told she’s a poet, when her passions lie elsewhere. Not in marriage though, and her sister Maria (Esther Draycott, cool, arch, yet resolute when needed) reminds her, her temper’s what prevents her from snaring a fiancé as she’s done; offstage Edward. Maria needs to be centre of attention; her reading Edward’s letters as interludes allow a few costume changes. Later scenes become fluidly simultaneous.
Two scientists have arrived. Corby offers a note-perfect performance. Roget, of Roget’s Thesaurus’ fame is a historic character. Just 20 here he lives to 90, and his love of lists and unravelling moral questions renders him less a scientist, more a traditional moral philosopher – the man in the painting pondering if the near-extinction of a bird is right. And he’s morally certain about the other young man. Fenwick’s been persuaded to take on for three months one Thomas Armstrong (Ben Baeza) a coldly ruthless anatomist, who’ll stop at nothing to examine deformities.
Unfortunately, he’s chanced on intelligent servant Isobel (Rose O’Kane) partly ignored till now. Her mastery of words isn’t wholly explained by vastly superior Scottish literacy (references to the Athens of the North); she immediately spots a Lear quotation. Both men are keen on her, Roget for honourable reasons. But he’s put off by Fenwick, acts decently and Armstrong pays his addresses. He knows she has a deformed spine: only Roget understands.
When Crow and Witham return it’s a role reversal. He’s now Tom the newly-redundant Literature lecturer (Crow realises this beautifully, a man hesitating qualms at his wife’s direction, playing low-status); whereas Witham inhabits the younger geneticist wife Ellen, palpably freer than her Susannah and now the dominant partner.
Her former pupil Kate (Evans again) is persuading her to take on her company’s genetic research. Not only are the couple contrasted, Kate’s almost a realisation of what Harriet might have become: bright though harder, with fewer ethical qualms than Harriet might have had.
Baeza though after his arrogant Armstrong, a role full of braggadocio, delights in the superbly executed Geordie electrician Phil: modest but chipper, prone to conspiracy theories and above all humane, even religious. When a discovery’s made, he lights a candle.
Whilst all are excellent, Crow’s Fenwick and Tom anchor the play, and if Baeza’s Phil is the other stand-out from 1999, Corby is superbly low-key and conflicted; and O’Kane with her devastating monologue reading her own letter is stunning. Impeccably Lowland-Scots accent, she commands whenever she’s on, even mute.
A few vocal issues aside, which disappeared as the play progresses, this is an impeccable revival, outstanding in its stagecraft, the musicians and overall rapt feel. And the ensemble are sovereign throughout its two-hours-30-plus. It’s one of the stand-out NVT productions of recent years. A must-see.
