Act-wise Detailed Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson

Act-wise Detailed Analysis- An Experiment with an Air Pump By Shelagh Stephenson

The play opens on a darkened stage. Projections of Wright of Derby’s painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump appear above. Ellen, a scientist in her fifties, stands alone and addresses the audience directly (a Brechtian technique of direct address, or “breaking the fourth wall”).

Ellen explains that she has loved this painting since she was thirteen years old. “I think it’s because the scientist is where God used to be,” she says. As a child, she was drawn to the idea of science as a transcendent, even spiritual, pursuit – a way of seeing “light in the darkness”.

She describes the painting in detail, noting the different figures and their expressions. Her analysis is both art‑historical and personal. She wonders about the people in the painting – their lives, their secrets, their relationships. “You can’t help but make up stories about them,” she says.

As she speaks, four projections of the painting are shown above the stage. Then, stage dressers enter and begin to transform Ellen into an eighteenth‑century woman. She is corseted, costumed, and wigged in full view of the audience. Simultaneously, the other actors enter and form a tableau vivant (a “living picture”) recreating the composition of Wright’s painting. The 1799 characters – Fenwick, Susannah, Harriet, Maria, Roget, Armstrong, and Isobel – freeze in position.

Ellen completes her transformation and becomes Susannah Fenwick. She steps into the tableau, taking her place. The lights change, and the 1799 action begins.

Act One – 1799: The Experiment

Scene 1 (1799): The Fenwick family living room. Dr. Joseph Fenwick is demonstrating the air pump to his family and his two young scientific protégés, Peter Roget and Thomas Armstrong. The bird in the glass vessel is his daughter Maria’s pet.

Maria is distressed: “Please stop it, Papa, he’s frightened.” Harriet, her twin, is fascinated: “Don’t be so silly, he’s not frightened.” Susannah, their mother, tries to calm Maria but is ignored by the men.

Fenwick removes air from the chamber. The bird struggles, then falls unconscious. Maria screams. Roget looks uncomfortable. Armstrong watches impassively, timing the experiment with a pocket watch. Fenwick’s hand hovers over the stopcock. Should he let air back in? The moment is frozen, exactly like the painting.

Finally, Roget cannot bear it any longer. He steps forward and releases the valve himself, defying Fenwick’s authority. Air rushes back into the chamber; the bird revives. Maria seizes the cage and runs out.

Fenwick is annoyed: “You’ve ruined the demonstration, Roget.” Roget replies, “The demonstration was over, sir. The bird was near death.” This small rebellion establishes the ethical divide between Roget (compassionate) and Armstrong (coldly objective).

Scene 2 (1799): The family discusses a lecture for New Year’s Eve. Susannah tries to join the conversation but is ignored. She drinks heavily. Armstrong wants to attend a demonstration by Dr. Farleigh (a notorious anatomist who uses illegally obtained cadavers). Fenwick refuses – there is rioting in the streets about the price of corn, and it is unsafe.

Scene 3 (1799): Harriet and Maria reveal their play – a masque that Harriet has written to please her mother, but which she has secretly filled with her own interests: industry, progress, the rejection of religion. Harriet, dressed as Britannia, represents the future; Maria, as a shepherdess, represents the pastoral past. The play is interrupted by the rioters, who throw a stone through the window.

Scene 4 (1799): Fenwick notices Isobel’s intelligence. She corrects his word choice (“cusp” vs. “threshold”) and reveals that all Scots can read. Armstrong mocks her deformity; Isobel responds with dignity. Roget and Isobel play a word game (listing synonyms for “servant”); Isobel wins. A romantic interest between Roget and Isobel is hinted.

Interlude – Maria’s letters: Maria reads letters from her fiancé, Edward, who is in India. He is homesick, then increasingly adapted to the colony. He mentions a “Miss Cholmondley” with growing familiarity. Maria becomes anxious.

Scene 5 (1999): The house, now owned by Tom (a retired English lecturer) and Ellen (a geneticist). They are selling the house. Phil, a builder, is measuring for renovation. Kate, a young scientist and Ellen’s former student, arrives to persuade Ellen to take a job at her biotech company.

The conversation turns to Ellen’s work – prenatal genetic testing – and its ethical implications. Phil is uncomfortable: “What’s the point of it?” Kate explains that it allows parents to abort foetuses with severe abnormalities. Phil, who has a daughter with health problems, is offended. “My uncle Stan was manic‑depressive and he was magic,” he says.

Tom enters from the basement. He has found a box of bones – human remains.

Act One – Continued (1799)

Scene 6 (1799): Another letter from Edward. He is no longer homesick – he has forgotten what England looks like. He writes of a friend being crushed by an elephant. Maria realises that Edward has become a different person.

Scene 7 (1799): Roget tries to woo Isobel, giving her a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. She deflects him: “I have no intention of marrying, sir. I intend to be solitary.” Fenwick interrupts, disapproving.

Scene 8 (1799): Fenwick lectures Roget about the future – a republic of reason where everyone will understand science. Susannah erupts: “You don’t listen to me! You forget I exist!” She storms out. Fenwick admits to Roget that he only has Armstrong in the house as a favour to Dr. Farleigh.

Scene 9 (1799): Armstrong apologises to Isobel for mocking her hump. He gives her a gift – a book of sonnets (echoing Roget’s gesture). He begins to seduce her, but his interest is clinical: he wants to examine her spinal deformity. Isobel is suspicious but vulnerable.

Act Two – 1999 and 1799 Alternating

Act Two, Scene 1 (1999): Tom and Phil bond over their shared outsider status. Tom is haunted by the box of bones; Phil lights a candle for the soul of the dead girl. Kate mocks them. Ellen is drawn into the debate about her job – her past miscarriages make the issue of prenatal testing deeply personal.

Act Two, Scene 2 (1799): Armstrong tells Roget about Farleigh’s methods – grave robbing, even identifying potential corpses before they are dead. Roget is horrified: “You seek out bodies before they’re even dead?” Armstrong replies that morality kills science.

Act Two, Scene 3 (1799): Harriet’s masque is finally performed. It is an allegory of British industry conquering pastoral innocence. Susannah is humiliatingly absent‑minded; Harriet shouts at her mother. The family explodes in recriminations.

Act Two, Scene 4 (1799): Fenwick and Susannah have a genuine conversation for the first time. He admits that he married her for her beauty, not her mind. She admits that she has been “deafened by domesticity”. They reach a fragile understanding.

Act Two, Scene 5 (1799): Maria confronts Edward’s letters. She realises he has been unfaithful with Miss Cholmondley. In a final letter, she breaks off the engagement: “I am not a fool, Edward. I am my father’s daughter.”

Act Two, Scene 6 (1799): Armstrong’s seduction of Isobel reaches its climax. He kisses her; she responds. Roget walks in and sees them. He challenges Armstrong: “What are your intentions?” Armstrong sneers: “I want to see her back. The deformity. I want to study it.”

Isobel, who has overheard, is devastated. She runs off.

Act Two, Scene 7 (1799): Isobel hangs herself in the attic. Maria finds her. Armstrong enters, finds her still alive (a pulse), and – instead of saving her – he delays, hides her suicide note (which implicates him), and lets her die. He tells the family she was already dead.

Roget realises what has happened. He punches Armstrong – the only physical violence in the play.

Act Two, Scene 8 (1999): New Year’s Eve. Ellen has decided to take the job. Tom supports her choice. Phil reveals that his daughter’s condition has worsened; he is going to the hospital. Kate is triumphant.

Final Scene (1799 and 1999 merged): The 1799 characters process Isobel’s body to the garden. The 1999 characters toast the new millennium. The stage directions call for a final tableau: Isobel’s body takes the place of the bird in Wright’s composition. Ellen/Susannah steps forward and speaks the last lines: “We stand on the threshold of a new century… We stand at the gates of a New Jerusalem.”

But the note is ironic. The “New Jerusalem” is built on Isobel’s grave.