PUMPGIRL. To 14 October.

Edinburgh/London

PUMPGIRL
by Abbie Spallen

Traverse 2 To 27 August
Tue-Sun various times
then Bush Theatre London
12 September-14 October 2006
Mon-Sat 8pm
Runs1hr 30min No interval

TICKETS: 0131 228 1404
www.traverse.co.uk (Edinburgh)
020 7610 4224
www.bushtheatre.co.uk (London)

Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 August

The devils lie in the details.
There’s something of Sam Shepard’s lonesome, overheated world in Abbie Spallen’s desolate Armagh where the young woman working the (apparently) sole pump providing juice to local motors herself gets primed by married chicken-farmer ‘No-helmet’ Hammy.

The risks he takes in his back-seat with her, as he’ll find when returning home and seeing what his wife Sinead’s done to his racing trophy, reflect why he enjoys the stockcar racing which first earned him the trophy. It’s the search for excitement in this stale landscape.

Spallen’s chosen the increasingly popular format (no-one takes to it like present-day Irish writers, though Beckett used it too in later plays) of the monologue. More specifically, of intercut monologues expressing each character’s outlook on the story being told. The form goes back at least to the 1970s and Robert Patrick’s Kennedy’s Children. Those people, though, had their separate stories to tell.

In many of the new plays in this style it’s used to re-evaluate what’s already been heard, to see how one person’s behaviour is perceived, or acts upon, others. It’s a form of writing that’s theatrical in putting the actor at the centre and it makes the audience actively involved in piecing significances together.

However, it demands constant attention, telling rather than showing events, which have to be predominantly in the past. What’s missing is the cut-and-thrust of characters interacting and the sense of situations developing before our eyes.

Spallen develops her 3 stories clearly, however, and receives a trio of excellent performances, pinpointed in Mike Bradwell’s customarily scrupulous direction. Orla Fitzgerald’s lively Pumpgirl accepts she’s seen all life will offer, taking in her stride even when Hammy sharing with her with his mates. James Doran shows Hammy’s as fed-up as anyone but retains a glimmer of conscience amid the aridity that’s become as much moral as it is territorial.

It’s in Sinead most spirit of resistance remains, which is worrying as she’s older than Pumpgirl. And Spallen has the ability to give colour to a character Shawshank (men go by nicknames here as if to find some identity life doesn’t give) who’s never seen.

‘No-Helmet’ Hammy: James Doran
Pumpgirl: Orla Fitzgerald
Sinead: Maggie Hayes

Director: Mike Bradwell
Designer: Bob Bailey
Lighting: Tanya Burns
Assistant director: Meriel Baistow-Clare

2006-08-23 14:44:46