“If you can make it there…” etc
Irish playwright Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl has just received a strong review from the New York Times. It is the tale of a female petrol pump attendant, a racing car driver and a lonely wife:
With three alternating monologues (varying a form familiar from works by Brian Friel and Conor McPherson) and its story of bitterly circumscribed lives, “Pumpgirl” is hardly the most original play to arrive from Ireland lately. But Ms. Spallen’s penetrating language and unsentimental view place it among the most powerful; no bog of plummy prose or nostalgia for her. Adding a fresh, female voice to the boys’ club of Irish playwrights, she infuses her monologues with slightly dated pop culture references that make her characters contemporary while revealing the tacky limits of their horizons. (Glen Campbell, Homer Simpson, Mel Gibson and The Matrix all become touchstones.)
Pumpgirl is Spallen’s fourth play and has already been well reviewed at the Edinburgh Fringe and during its London premiere. But that this off-Broadway run was also given a big preview in the New York Times suggests that the Newry-born writer has stepped up a few gears.
