Alison Quigan's long career

Quigan's long career on stage and screen spans 35 years.

Playwright Roger Hall seems to have an uncanny knack for writing stories about real New Zealanders that not only hit home, but also make us laugh.

His latest comedy, Taking Off, focuses on four women who head off on their first OE aged 50-plus. While former Shortland Street actress Alison Quigan did her OE many years ago, she says the idea of heading off again now appeals to her, as long as the accommodation is a bit more upmarket.

"I went overseas when I was young and fancy free in the 1970s. I've also been to a tea plantation in Sri Lanka with ChildFund New Zealand [Quigan is an ambassador for the humanitarian organisation] and heading overseas again is something I want to do. But not as a backpacker!" she says, laughing.

Quigan says the women head overseas because of a crisis. "They have a chance to do something with their lives that they hadn't expected to do. They didn't see it coming and these crises forced them into taking a different direction - a good direction."

Frankie (Deborah Davids) wins second division Lotto and decides to leave her boring husband. Ruth (Geraldine Brophy) leaves her farmer husband after she discovers he is having an affair. Noeline (Caroline Claver), having nursed her terminally ill husband for years, decides to take the trip they had planned together. Quigan plays the role of Jean, a loyal corporate employee who is made redundant after 20 years' service.

"She gets made redundant so decides to drop everything and head overseas. It's a great cast, I've worked with Gerry Brophy before, we've done Shakespeare and she acted in my play The Newbury Hall Dances. I've known Caroline since the 1970s in theatre, and Debbie I've known since the 1980s, we went to each other's weddings and also worked together."

Quigan was artistic director of Palmerston North's Centrepoint Theatre for 18 years. During that time she staged many of Hall's plays and is familiar with his work. "I've probably acted in all of his plays - certainly The Share Club, After the Crash, Social Climbers, Market Forces - and I directed The Shortcut to Happiness."

Quigan says Hall has an incredible ability to bring his audience into his plays.

"You can only rehearse a play up to a certain point; you have to be open to what the audience offers and he is unerring in his insight. People come to his plays because he tells a story about our lives. I was working in an office when Glide Time came out [Hall's 1976 play about an office of civil servants] and I thought he had really got where I worked. It was like he had been sitting on an outside window watching what goes on."

Quigan acts on stage and screen and says while she enjoys both, theatre offers more contact with the audience.

"They each have different things to offer and I enjoy the process of that. I worked on TV for 6 years and I still enjoy all of that - it's just a different way of working. I've been acting for over 35 years and I love to make people laugh but I also enjoy drama and Shakespeare and I write my own work."

During her career Quigan has acted in and or directed more than 130 plays, 11 of which she has written. These include Mum's Choir, The School Ball, and Five Go Barmy in Palmy.

Shop Till You Drop, written by Quigan and Ross Gumbley, will run at Centrepoint from April 13 to May 25. "I was absolutely thrilled to see it back playing there, as it's a lot of fun," says Quigan.

In July she is directing a new play, The Heretic, for the Auckland Theatre Company, but is unsure where it will be performed as the Maidment Theatre was badly damaged by a fire recently.

Hall says he got the idea for the play through a woman he met when giving a talk.

"She emailed me and said there was an amazing group of women who are vintage and having the time of their lives, and I think there's a play in it," says Hall.

"I sat on it for about a year and decided she was right. I approached Ana Samways, one of my former students in my playwrighting course, and she put in a little paragraph about me looking for women who'd travelled for the first time later in life."

Many women responded and Hall says he sent the women a questionnaire, following up with some on the phone or in person.

Hall says he learnt through the women's anecdotes that travelling alone was a big adventure, both wonderful and terrible in turn. The women told him that one of the frustrations of travelling alone was coming home to an empty hotel room at the end of an exciting day and having no-one to talk to.

In Taking Off, each of the women discovers things about themselves which propel them into a new way of thinking about their lives and their capabilities.

"Well, if you come home from travelling without change, you've learnt nothing," says Hall.

Taking Off will be performed at Whanganui's Opera House on April 26 (tickets from the box office) and Palmerston North's Regent on Broadway on April 29 (tickets from Ticketdirect).

Source: Stuff.co.nz