Pumpgirl

Pumpgirl works at a run-down garage on the frontier - the frontier of Northern and Southern Ireland.

These are the Armagh badlands; home of Pumpgirl's beloved Irish country music. Hammy is her man, hero of the local motor racing scene, a man so tough he refuses to wear a helmet. Unfortunately he has a wife, Sinead, who no longer rates him as either husband or lover.

Irish writers seem to make a speciality of these triple monologues which interweave their stories. Abbie Spallen has written a vigorous piece about three losers in life's race. The dying fall on which the play ends somehow seems to make us lose as well, leaving a somewhat empty feeling as we leave the theatre.

There's no denying the robustness of the writing that leads to this faint disappointment though, nor to the quality of the acting that it engenders.

Orla Fitzgerald is gloriously spunky as Pumpgirl, all masculine jauntiness as one of the boys but yearningly feminine under the surface. James Dorran is the epitome of swagger as the macho driving man who constantly lets down the women ' even his own wee daughter with his choice of dolls. Maggie Hayes is his embittered wife, who seeks solace elsewhere. She makes you feel the pain and love of a woman who's become an outsider in her own life.

It's her fleeting moment of peace that closes the play and, in fact, the ending seems stronger in retrospect than it did at the time. If it's a sign of good drama that a work resonates long after you've seen it, then clearly Pumpgirl is good drama.