Isambard Kingdom Brunel is a man who will forever be grafted into the DNA of Swindon town and, as part of the Swindon 175 celebrations, The Janice Thompson Performance Trust put on a wonderful show over the weekend within the appropriate setting of the STEAM Museum of the Great Western Railway.
The performance began with a soft choir of voices mimicking the wheezing and chugging of steam engines as part of ‘Overture’.
William Pearsom’s vocal work is exceptional as the adult Brunel who spends much of the performance mocking Dr Lardner (played by Shaun Holley).
‘The Ghosts of Box’ considers the not so glorious aspects of Brunel’s legacy as the audience is surrounded by the estranged ghosts of the 100 souls lost to the tunnel’s construction. ‘Gauge War’ is a fun piece with Brunel and Lardner having a tuneful spat about the broad and narrow gauges.
The majority of the performance was framed within the banter of a group of Swindonians on their way to St Ives on holiday as they discuss the highs and lows of Brunel’s career and how it affected their lives.
As the performance comes to a close we experience the losses of Brunel’s senior and junior as part of ‘Great Bridge and Great Ship’. One of the group on the trip to St Ives mutters ‘It’s said that the Great Western was the first nail in Brunel’s coffin and the Great Eastern was the last’, what a poetic way of describing Brunel’s exhausting final years designing and constructing his pioneering steam ships that voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean. This sequence was followed by a sombre duet by Mrs Brunel (Stephanie Walsh) and Lady Brunel (Natalie Chequer) now widows of two great engineers.
The performance was originally developed as part of the Brunel 200 celebrations in 2006, but this update featured improved lighting and sound production and was a fitting epitaph to Brunel’s legacy as an Engineer and railway pioneer.
