Lifelong fan Gabriel Quigley on bringing a classic Muriel Spark story to the stage

Gabriel Quigley was given Muriel Spark’s back catalogue of work as a Christmas present, immersed herself in her books for her university studies and has performed her work on stage.

Now the actress and writer has the task of bringing one of Spark’s best-known stories to life by adapting it for a modern-day theatre audience more than 60 years after it was published.

The Girls of Slender Means, which Quigley is adapting for the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, unfolds in post-war in London in the immediate aftermath of VE Day, following the lives and loves of a group of virtually penniless young women separated from their families and forced to live together under the one roof in a boarding house.

The show has been announced five years after the Lyceum helped stage the centrepiece event in Edinburgh to mark the 100th anniversary of Spark’s birth.

Quigley was among those asked to perform extracts of Spark’s work, including excerpts of her only stage play, Doctors of Philosophy, by Lyceum artistic director David Greig.

The event sold out the Usher Hall, with the response prompting further discussions about how to bring more of Spark’s work to the Lyceum stage.

Quigley recalled: "I actually opened the event with an extract from her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, which talks about Miss Kay, the teacher she based Jean Brodie on.

“The event was a complete sell-out and the audience completely lapped it up. The love and pride for her in the room was really palpable. It was a really rolicking night.

“I think David got me involved in that event because he knew that I knew a lot about Muriel Spark. I studied her work when I was at Glasgow University. We had a brilliant lecturer, Paddy Lyons, who really tried to impress on us that she was a ground-breaker, a world-beater and one of the great novelists of the 20th century.

“I grew up with Muriel Spark. My father, who was a teacher, had been a librarian when he was at Edinburgh University. She was always in the house and was always very highly regarded by my mum and dad. One of my older sisters was also a big fan.“One Christmas, when I was in my sixth year at school, my dad gave me her complete works. I don't know how he did because he didn’t have a lot of money on a teacher’s wage and had six kids.”

The Girls of Slender Means will be one of the centrepieces of the newly-announced programme at the Lyceum over the next year, part of a line-up which also includes Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Quigley said: “"David and I had been talking about doing something else with Muriel Spark’s work ever since that 100th anniversary gala.

“He had originally asked me to look at a possible staging of Doctors of Philosophy.

“However I felt it was very much of its time and if it was done now it would maybe show its age. The other thing was that Muriel was an author and a poet. She wasn’t a playwright.. I didn’t really know what to do with it to make it appealing to a modern audience.

“Then David re-read The Girls of Slender Means just before Christmas last year. He asked me what I would do with it and it has all come together quickly since then.”

Although set in a fictional institution in Spark’s book, which was published in 1963, was inspired by her own experiences staying in the Helena Club in London in 1944.

Quigley said: “There are five main characters who are living a life in penury in this quite rarefied boarding house.

“They novel starts just as the Second World War has ended. These young women have had jobs as secretaries in temporary ministries. They have had these important and busy lives, then suddenly the war is over.

“The story is about what will happen to these young women, and the re-negotiation of the roles of women after they have had their independence. These girls are all striving to succeed in life, but without any money. They are quite heroic in their commitment to keep going. A lot of it is about the absurdity of youth.

“For all the humour, the wit and the style, there is a sense of foreboding and instability. Muriel is brilliant at dealing with a lot of stuff and making seriously heavy points in the most sophisticated and elegant way. It kind of hits you like a brick by the end.”

Quigley believes many of the themes explored by Spark in the 1960s are more relevant than ever.She added: “There’s a lot of humour in the story, but also a lot of depth. Throughout the book, there’s a lot about dieting and these women trying to make themselves attractive to men.

“She’s not afraid of telling the truth – she’s good at the old truth bombs.

“She’s also really interested in the idea of the erasure of ordinary women and their lives. She wrote an incredible short story in 1957 about an office secretary who finds her own dead body after she is killed by her boss. She always has a lot going in her writing.”

Quigley, who describes herself as a “Muriel Spark nut,” is working with director Roxana Silbert on the production, which will premiere in April.

She added: “It’s really rare for her work to be adapted for the stage. I feel really, really lucky to get the chance to do this.

“For me, it’s really important to stay as true as possible to Muriel. People coming to the show will want to see her book and that it’s Muriel’s world. That’s what I’d like to give them.”