An Experiment with an Air Pump

In 1799, it’s the eve of a new century and a Northern English house buzzes with scientific experiments, furtive romance, and farcical amateur dramatics. In the present day in a world of scientific chaos and genetic engineering, the same house reveals a dark secret buried for 200 years. Jumping between both timelines, this play is a tapestry of two centuries.

In the present, Ellen is a geneticist drawn to Joseph Wright of Derby’s famous painting “An Experiment on a Bird the Air Pump,” a masterpiece from the Age of Enlightenment, that places “a scientist where you usually find God.” In 1799, Joseph Fenwick is a progressive scientist who believes in republicanism, though his wife Susannah is skeptical. At the turn of two very different centuries in the same house, the story crosses back and forth between Fenwick’s world and our own – in which Ellen and her husband Tom debate whether she should accept a lucrative post with a genetic engineering firm. Stephenson’s brilliant work questions the basic principles of scientific and medical research and also the role of women in science.