Sparkplug: A one-man show that’s vintage stuff

Actor, musician and writer, Little John Nee, is a one-man band whose show, Sparkplug, is superficially autobiographical. It’s about a travelling blues man and vintage-car mechanic.

But the detail that Sparkplug lives in his dead uncle’s barn is fiction. Nee wrote the one-man show in 2012, as a radio adaptation for RTÉ.

“Sparkplug comes from a family of rural mechanics,” says Nee, 54. “As a blues singer, he has been gigging all over the world. He finds himself in a fictional place called Tullyglen, and bases himself in the barn. He does shows all over the country, like myself, except he plays in really small venues. He’ll go anywhere he can get a gig. He’s always on the road, driving his vintage truck. The show is about the adventures he has on the road and the diverse rural communities he meets.”