'Pumpgirl' a powerful emotional journey

THEATER REVIEW

'Pumpgirl'

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

- Through May 24

- A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells

- Tickets, $20-$25

- (312) 943-8722

'Pumpgirl," a fierce, pain-laced, emotionally violent play by Irish writer Abbie Spallen, debuted three years ago at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, and within a very brief time, history seems to have caught up with this intimate drama in the most unexpected ways.

Spallen's aim was to capture the sad, depressed, hopeless lives of those working-class "stragglers" who seemed to be left behind when both the Irish Republic and a newly peaceful Northern Ireland experienced a huge economic boom and became dubbed the Celtic Tigers. But in the last year or so, both tiger factions have quite quickly and painfully been declawed. The influx of "offshore" jobs that fueled much of the growth suddenly turned into a rapid exodus (with multinationals fleeing to lower-cost countries in Eastern Europe and leaving whole cities undone), and the once ballooning real estate market predictably went bust.

So now, the sense of failure and despair that once was the hard lot of a pervasive but dwindling underclass has become the raw fate of many who thought they were home free. This, of course, is a situation with universal echoes these days, and that makes the searing Midwest premiere of "Pumpgirl" at A Red Orchid Theatre seem oddly prescient.

Spallen's play, keenly cast and directed by Karen Kessler, takes the form of a series of tightly interwoven monologues. Its three characters are onstage together and are psychically conscious of one another on a profound level. But only gradually does the perfect storm that undoes their intersecting lives become fully visible.

The pumpgirl of the play's title (played by newcomer Grace Rex, a slight, pale actress of compelling intensity) is a lonely, sensitive girl who works at a gas station on a bleak road outside town. In her grease-stained jumpsuit, she's the butt of many jokes by the men who drop by. But there's something about Hammy (Larry Grimm, expert in his delineation of a man who has never fully shaken adolescence) that entices her. Never mind that he is the married father of two kids. She sees him as a champion stock car racer, not as the loser he truly is. And though she knows all about his situation, she has sex with him in the back seat of her car, and clearly fantasizes that she's his girl.

Hammy's wife, Sinead (Kirsten Fitzgerald, a remarkable actress who embraces this character with uncanny completeness), is not so deluded. She knows his habits and continues to tolerate his presence only because there seems to be no other option. Yet in a fateful, perfectly limned moment of desperation, she also succumbs to the crude sexual enticements of a rat. And the consequences are dreadful.

The downward spirals of these three people, and their very different but terrible fates, is exquisitely unspooled by the actors (who also admirably sustain their heavy Irish accents, thanks to coaching by Anita Deely). And Spallen's clear-eyed vision of her characters' lives -- their language, their hidden poetry, their hunger for something more, and their mix of devouring self-knowledge and a tragic compulsion to self-destruct -- is enough to rattle any soul.

Photo: The lives of Sinead (Kirsten Fitzgerald, from left), Hammy (Larry Grimm) and Pumpgirl (Grace Rex) cross paths with dire consequences in "Pumpgirl" at A Red Orchid Theatre. ;