Review: Sarah Guppy: The Bridge, The Bed, The Truth

Show of Strength’s way of introducing us to the life and work of the startlingly under-recognised Bristol inventor, designer, engineer, environmental campaigner (deep breath), investor and mother-of-six Sarah Guppy (1770-1852), is to have the great lady herself up on stage, recalling her fascinating and eventful life.

And SoS’s extra happy touch is to set this act of recall in the present day, allowing Sarah access to some of the modern technology that she would have loved (and quite possibly invented, if she’d been given the chance), thus allowing a) audiences a more lively, multi-faceted experience than a mere lecture, and b) Sarah herself to cock a snook at some of Bristol’s recent indolence, indecision and foot-dragging in the sphere of transport and infrastructure (MetroBus, anyone? It took Sarah’s contemporaries just five years to create the Floating Harbour: we’re now at 12 years and counting for a bus route).

All pics: Zuleika Henry

I won’t reveal too much here, but Sarah Guppy’s life was a truly remarkable one: a dynamo of energy and curiosity, living at the time of (and contributing her part to) seismic changes in industry, infrastructure and urbanisation.

That she is not better known, is revealed here as strikingly unjust (and all power to Show of Strength for redressing this injustice), though perhaps not particularly surprising in an age when gender inequality loomed larger than it does today, and when for a woman to take an interest in science, engineering, physics – anything beyond her home, her children and her manners – was not quite ‘nice’.

Thankfully, in this Year of Engineering and Centenary of Women’s Suffrage, this seminal figure in the history of engineering and yes, proto-feminist (see the show to find out more) is getting her due in fine fashion here.

Sarah’s many enterprises included a book, ‘Dialogues for Children’

You won’t look at Isambard Kingdom Brunel or the Clifton Suspension Bridge in quite the same way ever again after seeing this piece. You will take away a renewed sense of how Bristol was very near to the centre of things during the Industrial Revolution. And you will wonder whether your bed shouldn’t be keeping you fitter.

Kim Hicks puts in a strong, confident, witty performance as the indefatigable Mrs Guppy – brimming with self-belief, bristling with a kind of impatient scorn at the various men who put obstacles in her way (see, again, the Suspension Bridge… and a brief unflattering cameo from the Smyth family of Ashton Court).

There aren’t really any moments of stillness or reflection in the performance, to provide a counterpoint to all the energy and self-belief: fair enough, though, as you sense that that is simply how Sarah lived her life.

This withering dismissal of the forces against progress provides some of the comedy – of which, in fact, there is plenty, most memorably during Sarah’s very vivid reminiscences of her visit to Humphrey Davy in Dowry Square, Hotwells, the inventor of laughing gas. Rarely was a name more apt, it seems.

There’s also a fascinating and funny detour into the uses of horse manure (a big problem in your average fast-growing, pre-motorised 18C city), featuring some (very unthreatening) audience participation.

You also get a very rich sense of the time – the Industrial Revolution, the fast emergence of America as a global industrial power, the battle for supremacy at sea and changes in naval warfare, another area in which Sarah played a small but key part. And you meet, fleetingly, some of the age’s key characters (such as Lord Nelson, whom she meets on a bridge in Monmouth while he’s scouting for oak for his beloved Navy, and who later, to her great satisfaction, “breathed his last on a ship fitted with Guppy nails”).

The show brings Sarah into the present day to give her views on how Bristol has developed

Hicks, and the script, whistle through that life at quite a lick, and there are moments when there could have been a pause for a bit more explanation of this or that invention, development or patent pending; and on a few occasions an episode or anecdote could be wrapped up more clearly and resolutely, some of which is probably down to first-night feet-finding.

But these are minor caveats in what is an inspiring and witty homage to someone who deserves a far more central place in Bristol’s – and Britain’s – commercial and industrial history.

Sarah Guppy: The Bridge, The Bed, The Truth is at the Hen & Chicken until Nov 7, and at the Create Centre on Nov 8 & 9 at 4pm and 6.30pm. For more information and to buy tickets, visit www.showofstrength.org.uk

Read more: Introducing a little-known Bristol pioneer