The Engineer's Corset
A play about I.K.Brunel as seen through the eyes of his wife Mary Brunel
A play about I.K.Brunel as seen through the eyes of his wife Mary Brunel
Jemma’s performance is simply mesmerising – Estelle Simkins, Bucks Examiner 28/04/05
THE ENGINEER’S CORSET takes place in the Brunels’ living room at 18, Duke St, Westminster; overlooking St James’s Park. It is 1843
It also takes place as a vision growing from MARY BRUNEL’S own dreadful prescience about life without her Little Giant.
We see the great engineering achievements of the Brunels, father and son, through her eyes. She becomes the people who fill her life to tell us her story better.
IK Brunel lies upstairs, choking to death, having swallowed a half sovereign while performing magic tricks for their three children.
He designs forceps to retrieve the coin from his throat but these don’t work.
He then designs a frame on which he’ll bounce and swing.
Mary’s corset will attach him to his frame; he knows that corset intimately. He admires its construction. He understands the risk in being attached by his wife’s corset but is prepared to take it.
She is less sure about removing it into the hands of the uncouth surgeon’s assistant. Is it her body’s warmth as much as her corset’s engineering that attracts Isambard to it? She relinquishes it.
Brunel’s coin flies out.
Mary takes the coin and hides it.
She goes to be robed in her finest; to be prepared for the many eminent guests they are bound to receive.