Home / What's On / Sept / Pumpgirl - Lyric Theatre
Drama
Mon 29 & Tues 30 Sept 2008 at 8pm
Pumpgirl
Lyric Theatre
Tickets: €15/€10
Friends: Personal 3 for 2, Couples 4 for 2, Business 6 for 3
NB: Contains very strong language and adult content – over 15s only.
A turbo-charged race through the diesel fumes and country music of the borderlands of South Armagh from one of the North’s most exciting new writers.
“Abbie Spallen comes out all guns blazing, with writing so sparky and intricately observed, it seems as if it might spontaneously combust” **** The Guardian
Written by Newry playwright Abbie Spallen, Pumpgirl is set in a petrol station just north of the Border, located on the wrong side of the fluctuating exchange rate. The business is on its last legs: battered, faded signs grace the stage – desperate attempts at enticing customers with cheap two–litre bottles of cola and past their sell-by sweets.
Above: Samantha Heaney (Pumpgirl) and Stuart Graham ("No Helmet Hammy")
The Pumpgirl is one of the people who work in the petrol station. A tom-boy who thinks she’s one of the lads, the Pumpgirl is involved with a married middle-aged boy racer “No-Helmet” Hammy. He’s out all night with his racing boys while his wife Sinead’s off on a joyride of her own. The three are all on a course for a dramatic collision, but will they survive the impact?
“A fiercely observed, unflinching play, emphasising the staggering force of good storytelling”
NY Times
More about Pumpgirl and its author
Written by Spallen in 2006, Pumpgirl has enjoyed success in both the UK and America, originally being produced for the 2006 Edinburgh Festival by London’s Bush Theatre before enjoying a widely acclaimed run in New York’s Manhattan Theatre Club. This production, by Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, is the first time it has been produced for Irish audiences.
Spallen worked as an actor for many years and it was on a drive home to Newry after a disastrous production of Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening in Co. Tipperary that inspiration struck for the Pumpgirl. She had stopped off to buy petrol at a local gas station and was served by a young female attendant who was so into her job, and so keen to please that Spallen suddenly realized there was a girl like her in every town in Ireland. Girls who were fixated on the GAA, girls who were very butch but not gay, girls who were often just trying to be one of the lads, but who were actually laughed at.
Spallen found her fascinating and realized that there was a real character standing in front of her. It was then that the second character in PumpGirl, Hammy, the boy racer she falls for, just evolved. “There was a guy who used to live on our estate who used to work in a chicken hatchery. We nicknamed him Budgie,” says Spallen. “He used to walk around everywhere in slippers. Another lad I used to see around the place literally became the character Hammy. The inspirations for the people in this play were all around me, really.”
“I think that’s where the character Sinead in the play came from,” says Spallen. “From thinking just how the hell would I feel if I was still in that environment? Sinead has an intelligence that has no outlet. One man comes along and speaks one line of poetry to her and she falls for him right away. It’s tragic."
Spallen is currently adapting Pumpgirl for a feature film with Holywood Productions and Northern Ireland Screen. Her new play 'Shaving The Pickle' will open in September 2008 in New York for Origin Theatre Company. She is currently under commission to write new plays for The Bush, (London) Fishamble (Dublin), and Tinderbox (Belfast).
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