Abigail (NHB Modern Plays)

By Fiona Doyle

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A man in his forties and a woman in her twenties meet on a trip to Berlin. Across a fractured timeline where past and present collide, the story of their relationship, their love and their struggle unravels.
Abigail premiered at The Bunker, London, in 2017. The play was shortlisted for the Eamon Keane Full-Length Play Award.
Fiona Doyle's other plays include Deluge (Hampstead Downstairs, winner of the Eamon Keane Award) and Coolatully (Finborough Theatre, winner of the Papatango New Writing Prize).
'An expressive and memorable play' Exeunt Magazine on Coolatully
"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Jan 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780018478

Fiona Doyle

Fiona Doyle is a playwright whose work includes: So Gay, winner of the 2013 Play for the Nation’s Youth; Deluge, winner of the 2014 Eamon Keane Full-Length Play Award; and Coolatully, winner of the 2014 Papatango New Writing Prize. Her short plays include Rootbound and Rigor Mortis (Arcola Theatre) and Two Sisters (Southwark Playhouse).

Book preview

Abigail was first performed at The Bunker, London, on 10 January 2017. The cast was as follows:

Acknowledgements

Abigail was one of the first plays I wrote so the response it drew at the time was very encouraging from an emerging-writer point of view. With that in mind, thank you to the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, the Eamon Keane Full-length Play Award, Theatre503, Diyan Zora, Thomas Conway, and Will Mortimer. Thank you also to the actors Charlie De Bromhead and Kathryn O’Reilly for taking part in a read-through of an earlier draft. And thanks in particular to Joshua McTaggart, Sarah Joyce and all at The Bunker who took the ‘nearly there’ play and made it happen.

F.D.

‘Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.’

‘Burnt Norton’, Four Quartets,

T.S. Eliot

Characters

MAN, mid-forties

WOMAN, mid-twenties

Note on Text

A forward slash (/) indicates the point where the immediately following dialogue, or action, interrupts.

A dash (–) indicates the point where a line of dialogue is abruptly cut off by the speaker themselves or by something/ someone else.

An ellipsis (…) indicates a hesitation, a thought changing track, being lost for words.

The absence of a punctuation mark at the end of a line interrupted by a forward slash (/) indicates that the line of dialogue would have continued if there had been no interruption.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

Darkness.

A piercing sound.

It increases in volume, getting louder and louder until…

1. Kitchen

MAN is sitting at table. He is unshaven, barefoot and dressed casually. There’s a half-empty beer bottle in front of him. WOMAN is wearing a smart black dress and she is looking at him.

Silence.

WOMAN. Why aren’t you dressed?

MAN. There was snow when we landed.

Beat.

You had snow in your hair. Walking to the