Teenage pal's 'abduction' inspired my new play

A random encounter with a stranger when he was just 15 on the streets of old Drumchapel - and impending fatherhood 16 years later.

Squash opens at Oran Mor, in Glasgow's West End, this week, billed as a dark comedy with a bad boy bike thief being held in a flat, accused of stealing a mother and son's bike.

And for Martin, 33, the idea was sparked by a similar situation he and two friends found themselves himself in as teenagers.

"I grew up in old Drumchapel and I was walking home with two friends," he says. "It was really late at night, about 1am, and we'd probably been up to no good!

"A taxi pulled up and a man jumped out, wearing his dressing gown and slippers. He accused us of stealing his bike. He was pointing at my friend Paul, He slapped him across the face and dragged him into the taxi and it drove off.

"Paul went up to this guy's flat and his mother was there. She said it wasn't him, it was a case of mistaken identity."

Martin had been mulling over the idea that the incident would make a good starting point for a play two years ago when he learned he was about to become a father. which was a "huge catalyst" to spur him on to put pen to paper.

Squash is set in a high rise council flat in an unspecified location where a mother and son live together. It opens with them accusing a young middle class boy - not from the estate - of stealing their bike.

"Over the course of the play, you realise there's something up, there's more to it," Martin explains. "You're not really sure why the boy is there. It's about unravelling the background.

"I like setting up a play where there's lots of mystery and you feel the carpet is pulled out from under you."

It touches on the class system, but is not supposed to be a commentary on it, Martin says.

"The situation with the mother and son in the flat is also strange," he adds. "They live hermetically sealed off, and drag the outside world in."

Martin, who graduated as an actor from the RSAMD in 2007 after a false start as a quantity surveyor, is juggling writing with acting and happy to continue doing both. He spent a year at the Dundee Rep and has worked across the UK on stage and in TV and radio.

The father-of-two, who has sons Joe, 2, and six-week-old Charlie, is balancing a hectic home life in Polmont with Squash.

Not one to do things by halves, he is also currently on stage in the Three Sisters, at The Tron, which opened earlier this month.

"We started rehearsing Squash at the beginning of October, two weeks before it goes on stage," he says. "That's the phenomenon of Oran Mor. They have the highest output of new writing in Britain. I've worked there twice before, it's like a rite of passage for jobbing actors in Scotland."

He hopes his play will benefit from the fact that a lot of the actors in Scotland know one another and are good friends.

"I think they also want to do well for me, because they know me. I hope so anyway!"

Martin confesses to being a little nervous about watching the "world premiere!" of his play, the first he wrote but not the first to be performed.

He was one of the writers of News Just In, a satire of the Commonwealth Games set in a fictional TV newsroom at the Arches theatre, and Edinburgh Fringe Traverse Breakfast Play The Day the Pope Emptied Croy.

"It's great seeing other actors perform your work and do things you might never have thought of," he says.

"Everything I've written has always had an amazing cast and great directors, I've been really lucky."

Squash - which takes its title from a conversation in the play and the "constrained space" it is set in, with the whole performance taking place in the flat - opens today at 12noon.

Martin will be there and is "really excited".

"I can't wait," he says.

"I think I get more nervous about seeing my play performed than if I was acting because you've got no control. I think I'll definitely need the pint!"

n Squash runs until Saturday. See www.oran-mor.co.uk for details.

victoria.brenan@eveningtimes.co.uk