Although better known as an actor, Abbie Spallen is now receiving ringing endorsements for her award-winning writing from critics in New York and London, writes Jane Coyle
THE MONTH OF AUGUST in Belfast has seen the return to the stage of one of the city's best-loved actors/writers, with the revival of a perennially-popular play, and also the arrival of a younger, emerging voice, with a fearless piece, forged out of the landscape in which she grew up. Marie Jones reworked, updated and spruced-up Women on the Verge of HRT - her tongue-in-cheek ode to Daniel O'Donnell and the menopause - for a sell-out two-week run at the Grand Opera House.
Meanwhile, Abbie Spallen's Pumpgirl, which is also currently being adapted as a feature film, is about to receive its Irish premiere at Queen's University's Drama Centre, courtesy of the Lyric Theatre.
Until now, Spallen has been better known in the North as an actor, who burned brightly at the Lyric, as well as in touring productions with companies such as Big Telly and Replay, before moving to Dublin to continue her career. Yet for years, while all eyes were fixed on her stage appearances, behind the scenes she was scribbling away like crazy. Like so many others of her generation, she was inspired by Charabanc, the all-female company founded in the 1980s by Jones and four other Northern actors, including Eleanor Methven and Carol Moore.
"I used to write to Charabanc when I was 20 and beg them to come and see my plays," she laughs. Now, here she is, a busy, respected writer, winner of the 2007 BBC Tony Doyle Award for Screenwriting, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jones, and proudly bringing home a play which has already wowed audiences and critics in London, Edinburgh and New York.
Reviewers in London and New York went several steps beyond the Lyric press release's description of Pumpgirl as "a turbo-charged race through the diesel fumes and country music of the borderlands of South Armagh". The Guardian gave the Bush Theatre world premiere four stars and declared: "Abbie Spallen comes out all guns blazing, with writing so sparky and intricately observed, it seems as if it might spontaneously combust."
The New York Times raved over the production's transfer to Manhattan Theatre Club, calling it "a fiercely-observed, unflinching play, emphasising the staggering force of good storytelling."
Such ringing endorsements have wrought a palpable change in Spallen, whose persona often tended to carry an engaging air of diffidence and self-effacement. By her own admission, she is now far more confident as a writer than she was as an actor and she is not worried about the critical response in Ireland to Andrew Flynn's new Lyric production.
"I know the play works," she states matter-of-factly. "It is already a success and while I will be really interested in how people here react to it, I am not looking for validation. What is important is that it has, at last, come home. It was spotted by Andrew, who was the assistant director on the first piece I wrote for Druid. He brought it to the Lyric and has put together a fantastic cast - Stuart Graham, Maggie Hayes and this amazing young girl, Samantha Heaney from Newry.
"It was a chance in a million that it ever got to see the light of day. I sent it to the Bush Theatre in London as an unsolicited script and they took it on. They get about 1,500 a year, so it was a very big deal.
"Tinderbox in Belfast had wanted to do it, but they hit some kind of funding hiccup and I had to go with the Bush. After Druid, I thought, that's it, back you go into your box now. Then this happened. I've actually been writing professionally since 2001, but this will be my first full production on stage in Ireland.
"I know it's quite a common occurrence and that many far more notable writers than I have been there before, but I was upset when I heard a report last year that the Abbey had said it was not putting on any new writing, because there wasn't any. And there was I with a new play going on - in London."
HER POWERFUL THREE-HANDER is structured around a series of monologues, whose effect is to create a swirling, dizzying stream of consciousness. The language is uncompromising, the situations heartbreaking and the characters step straight out of the landscape and back roads of the borderlands around Spallen's native town of Newry. When she talks about her characters, it is as if they have taken on new resonance in the context of recent pronouncements made by Northern politicians, which underline the difficulties experienced by people who, for one reason or another, are perceived to be "different".
"At its basic level, the play is about being an individual. In Northern Ireland, it's very difficult to be different. When you hear the sort of stuff that public representatives here are coming out with, you feel the country has to wake up and realise that the rest of the world has moved on into the 21st century. In any other environment, these people would thrive and prosper and have great lives. But they are over-sensitive and get sucked into a kind of horribleness. It's a play about love, but it is not a love story. Some people may be appalled by the content, yet it's not appalling. It's very funny. It's certainly not a chick flick."
Spallen began to take her writing seriously during the years she spent in Dublin, when, as a struggling actor, she often had time on her hands. "I had reached the situation of not waiting for the phone to ring with a job at the end of it. It was tough to make ends meet as an actress. Then I wrote a play called Abeyance, which was accepted by Druid for a week of readings and workshops. It was directed by Kirsten Sheridan and was a great experience. I loved working with Kirsten. Bit by bit, I started to dare to think of myself as a writer - a part-time actress and part-time writer."
Then came Pumpgirl, whose central character is something of a force of nature, inspired by someone Spallen stumbled across during a long, boring night-time drive.
"I was driving back home to Newry with a friend one night, after a disastrous production of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening. We stopped off to buy petrol at a local gas station. A young girl came out to fill up the car. She was wearing combats and a sweatshirt and walked with a kind of a tomboyish swagger. She was so into her job and so keen to please. I looked at her and thought 'there's a girl like her in every town in Ireland'. She just stood there in front of me and presented herself as this fully-fleshed character. The story and the other characters grew from her."
Spallen vehemently denies that the play is in any way autobiographical, but admits that the characters do bear a close resemblance to people who lived around her.
"Hammy, the boy-racer Pumpgirl falls for, just kind of evolved. There was a guy who lived on our estate, who used to work in a chicken hatchery. We nicknamed him 'Budgie'. He used to walk around everywhere in slippers.
"Another lad I used to see around the place literally became the character Hammy. The inspiration for the people in this play was all around me, really. Hammy's wife Sinéad came out of my wondering just how the hell I would feel if I was still in that environment. Sinéad has an intelligence that has no outlet. A man comes along and speaks one line of poetry to her and she falls for him right away. It's tragic.
"I grew up in a fairly rough council estate and my father was a local schoolteacher, so we used to regularly get the shite knocked out of us. It wasn't the done thing in Newry to read a lot of books at the time I was growing up. But the dual influences were interesting, to have all these books and have a completely working-class community all around you.
"It's also a bit unusual, given where I come from, that my family has long connections with the theatre. My mother, Thelma Spallen, performed at the Lyric in its early days in Ridgeway Street and my uncle designed the famous sign for the Lyric building - the head of Cúchulainn and the raven.
"Both my parents were involved in the old Newpoint Players, but I kind of drifted into acting. I did a year at art college and then a bit of travelling, before taking part in a New Ulster Theatre project with Niall Cusack."
These days, life is sweet for Spallen - and it shows in the big smile on her face and the quiet confidence of her manner.
"It feels right," she says. "It's much more fun being a writer than being an actress. I love going into the theatre and having discussions with the director and the designer about casting and the set. It just fits. It's just me."
She recently moved to London and is bubbling with energy about all the projects which are opening up. Two days before Pumpgirl opens in Belfast, she has a new play, Shaving the Pickle, opening in New York for Origin Theatre Company's Inspire Expire Festival of new Irish writing. "They took five Irish writers to New York for a week and invited us to wander around, immerse ourselves in the city and then write a play," she recalls. "Not bad, huh?"
Tinderbox has signed her up to write a piece for a show which will coincide with the US presidential election in November and she is relishing the fact that her forthcoming play for Fishamble will offer four major roles for women - "something I could have done with when I was acting".
HER NEXT PLAY for the Bush Theatre is set at the beginning of the Northern Irish Troubles and makes parallels with the war in Iraq, a subject she feels passionately about. So, can one reasonably assume that her acting days are well and truly over?
"Never say never," she smiles. "I did a play for the Lyric just a couple of years ago - Damian Gorman's 1974: The End of The Year Show. The thing is, I don't have the time any more. When I'm acting, I tend to be very researchy and put an awful lot of work into every role. The irony is that now I'm so busy writing, I regularly get availability checks for acting jobs. But I'm not available.
"It's all a bit mad, but it's going great and I'm loving every minute. I felt a lot of doors were closed to me in the past and now doors are opening all over the place. I mean, I've a premiere coming up in New York in a few weeks - I'll need to buy two new frocks. I hope I don't get big-headed, but it's unlikely. I know this business inside out and I'm too old for that kind of carry-on."
Pumpgirl previews at Newry Arts Centre (today and tomorrow), opens at Queen's Drama Centre, Belfast (Sept 1st to 20th) and tours until Oct 11th to Omagh, Enniskillen, Letterkenny, Sligo, Strabane, Cookstown, Dublin and Armagh
