2:22 – A Ghost Story E-Book

Danny Robins

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 105

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'I'd get freaked out here, alone in the dark. Wondering what's lurking at the bottom of the bed, ready to grab your feet.' Jenny and Sam – and their baby Phoebe – have recently moved into their new home. But something feels frightening and wrong. Very wrong. Over the baby monitor, at 2:22 every night, Jenny hears footsteps around her daughter's cot. Could the house be haunted? When their friends Lauren and Ben come round for a housewarming dinner, they drink wine, relive their pasts, and argue about the existence of ghosts. They decide to stay up until 2:22, to discover the truth. Over one adrenaline-filled night – as the foxes scream outside – secrets will emerge and ghosts may appear… Spine-chilling, funny and scary, Danny Robins' play 2:22 was premiered at the Noël Coward Theatre in London's West End in August 2021, directed by Matthew Dunster, and starring Lily Allen, Julia Chan, Hadley Fraser and Jake Wood. It went on to win Best New Play at the 2022 WhatsOnStage Awards, and was nominated for Best New Play at the Olivier Awards. 2:22 provides rich opportunities for any drama group wanting to make things go bump in the night – and their audiences scream.

Leseprobe

Danny Robins

2:22

A Ghost Story

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction by Danny Robins

Original Production Details

Dedication

2:22 – A Ghost Story

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

IntroductionDanny Robins

Do you believe?

We live in an age well attuned to the incendiary power of words, but there’s one word that has more power to divide than most – ‘ghost’. In our jaded been-there, done-that, unshockable world, the statement ‘I have seen a ghost’ still has the power to silence a room and forever change the way you see someone, or how people see you. If you’re a sceptic, how would you react to your partner claiming the house is haunted? If you’re a believer, how would it feel to be told by someone you love that the ghost you saw doesn’t exist?

I’ve been fascinated by ghosts since I was a child. I think it had something to do with growing up in a devoutly atheist family, wondering if there was some other realm where magic existed, if only I believed enough. Some people might have found God, but I found spooks. Fuelled by horror movies, a scream-filled trip to see The Woman in Black, and the now-legendary Usborne book, World of the Unknown: Ghosts – certain pages too frightening to look at even in a well-lit school library – my interest grew and, as an adult, it became entwined with a realisation of my own mortality. The idea that death was not the end seemed attractive, but did I actually believe? No… well, maybe… but ghosts remained an abstract to be enjoyed in books and films, until a good friend of mine told me she had seen one. I found her account simultaneously impossible and yet totally convincing. It struck me that a ghost sighting is a detective story, where both the witness and ghost are suspects. It lays our relationship with the teller bare. Do we trust them as they reveal this life-changing moment of profound fear? What are the implications if we cannot? The idea for the play was born…

I’ve spent a lot of the past few years interviewing people who are convinced they’ve seen ghosts. It began as research for 2:22, but the stories I collected soon took on a life of their own, spawning two podcast series, Haunted and then The Battersea Poltergeist for the BBC. I am now sent a steady stream of emails from people who believe they’ve had paranormal experiences. In some cases, the sender hasn’t told anyone before, for fear of being mocked or having their sanity questioned. Being haunted has become a taboo. The stories can be powerful, terrifying, and sometimes deeply moving. Many of the experiences can, I think, be explained, but there are a healthy minority that defy easy answers. These are the ones that set my pulse racing.

So, do ghosts actually exist? Paranormal experiences have followed certain patterns throughout history. Reports of poltergeists haven’t changed since Roman times – they thump on walls and throw objects across rooms. Believers cite this as a body of evidence, whilst sceptics see it as the contagion of belief. What I think it proves more than anything, though, is how much humans need ghosts; how deeply rooted and hard to shift they are in our psyche; the supernatural equivalent of Japanese knotweed. There’s a reason that, despite all our advances in science, we haven’t ever consigned ghosts to the scrapheap of redundant superstition along with elves and unicorns.

Supernatural belief goes through boom periods. After both world wars, there was a mass fascination with seances and spiritualism, as society struggled to process the chaos and loss of life. Now, our own uncertain, death-filled times are breeding a new paranormal renaissance. Horror is hugely popular on film and TV, there’s a vogue for spooky podcasts like mine, and the ghost story is again an admired literary form. In the real world, there’s also a worrying resurgence in exorcisms in both the Christian and Islamic faiths.

A sceptic might see this as a sign of the times – irrationality and naked belief triumphing over science and rationalism – but it’s possible to read it in a different way: not a symptom of chaos but our response to it; a collective longing for magic and hope in a world that feels bleak and cruel. This is the paradox of ghost belief – something so redolent with death is also deeply comforting. Ghost stories, by exposing us to the exhilaration of terror in a contained way, reinforce the security of our own existence. They’re our defence against humankind’s greatest enemy, death; a way of processing the horrible thought that one day we and all we love will simply cease, our grand achievements rendered meaningless.

Perhaps sceptics need to be careful what they wish for in wanting to dissolve spooky shadows under the powerful floodlights of reason. Whether we believe in them or not, ghosts are society’s buffer between life and death, and a world without them – with every corner, nook and cranny illuminated leaving nowhere for the dead to hide, or for us to hide from death – that is a truly frightening idea. Perhaps the question is not ‘Do ghosts exist?’, but ‘Can we exist without ghosts?’

2:22 – A Ghost Story was first performed at the Noël Coward Theatre, London, on 11 August 2021 (previews from 3 August), produced by Tristan Baker and Charlie Parsons for Runaway Entertainment, Isobel David and Kater Gordon. The cast and creative team were as follows:

JENNY

Lily Allen

LAUREN

Julia Chan

SAM

Hadley Fraser

BEN

Jake Wood

COMPANY

Richard Pryal

Bianca Stephens

Director

Matthew Dunster

Set Designer

Anna Fleischle

Costume Designer

Cindy Lin

Lighting Designer

Lucy Carter

Sound Designer

Ian Dickinson for Autograph

Casting Director

Jessica Ronane CDG CSA

Illusions

Chris Fisher

Fight Director

Rachel Bown-William and Ruth Cooper-Brown of RC Annie Ltd

Vocal/Dialect Coach

Hazel Holder

Production Manager

Marty Moore

Assistant Director

Isabel Marr

Associate Set Designer

Liam Bunster

Associate Casting Director

Abby Galvin

Associate Illusionist

Will Houstoun

For my children Leo and Max, and my wife Eva, who’s too scared to read this

Characters

JENNY, thirties, a primary-school teacher

LAUREN, late thirties, Californian, a psychotherapist

BEN, forties, London accent, a builder

SAM, late thirties, a physics professor and writer

PC MILLER, female

PC STIRLING, male

Setting

The action takes place across twenty-four hours in a house in a newly gentrified part of London.

Writer’s Note

A forward slash (/) in the text indicates the point at which the next speaker interrupts.

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

ACT ONE

Scene One

A Victorian terraced house in the midst of renovation. There’s a spacious open-plan kitchen and dining room, the result of a new extension. It’s fresh, shiny; IKEA supplemented with more expensive items.

A simple old wooden dining table is surrounded by four chairs. Further away are a sofa, coffee table, beanbag and white rug, strewn with baby toys. There are framed pictures of a baby on a shelf.

There’s a door to a guest toilet – sink and cupboards visible – and another door to the hall, through which we see recently polished floorboards and stairs.

The upstage wall bridges the extension and the original house. The new side is taken up by imposing glass doors looking onto a dark garden. Near the doors is a telescope on a stand. The rest of the wall is midway through being painted white. There are stubborn remnants of twee 1970s wallpaper.

JENNY is standing on a stepladder, painting, wearing pyjamas, a fleece jacket and scarf. On the floor is an assortment of paint tins, rollers, etc.

On the kitchen counter is a baby monitor, green lights flickering, registering the ambient noise of a sleeping baby.

There’s a large digital clock on the wall. The red numbers change to 02:20…

JENNY stops and comes down the ladder. She pours some white spirit into a jar and puts her brush into it. There’s a glass of red wine on the floor. She finishes it and turns off the light, then takes her glass to the kitchen, putting it in the dishwasher –

Outside, a security light lurches on, illuminating the garden and an old shed, making her jump. She looks through the glass – nothing.

The security light goes out. It’s dark again; only the spill from the hall. She walks towards the door – suddenly, the tinny, computerised sound of ‘Old MacDonald’ punctures the silence –

JENNY. Fuck!

She’s stepped on a child’s toy. She picks it up, flicks a switch – the music stops. The clock changes to 02:21. She takes a breath, her heart thumping, and walks out of the room –

We hear her walk upstairs. Then, through the monitor, a bedroom door creaks open, followed by the whimper of a baby, mid-dream, and JENNY’s soothing voice –

(Offstage.) Sssh! It’s okay, baba… It’s okay.

We hear JENNY leave the room, then the monitor emits the beeps that show it’s run out of battery and goes dead.

A long beat… The clock changes to 02:22. Another beat, then the silence is torn apart by JENNY screaming, loud and awful.

Blackout.

The red numbers of the digital clock sear themselves into the dark.

Scene Two

In the darkness, the clock races forwards to 20:36. Lights up.

The toilet door is now closed. LAUREN is standing in the kitchen, holding a glass of wine and inexpertly poking a pan of risotto with a wooden spoon. She’s dressed up for dinner but cool and casual.

The baby monitor is on the counter next to her. Through it, we hear SAM reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.

LAUREN listens, hooked by the rhythmic flow of SAM’s voice, as JENNY enters, in a dress and heels.

SAM gets to the point in the story where the family have tiptoed into the cave and spotted something in the dark… JENNY turns the monitor off.

LAUREN. I was enjoying that.

JENNY. Sorry.

(Then.) Spoiler alert – it’s a bear.

An awkward beat. JENNY picks up the stepladder.

Phoebe doesn’t understand a word of it. But you know what Sam’s like. She’ll have a PhD by the time she’s three.

She’s managed to pick up the paint tins too and tries to open the patio door –

Sorry – it’s a tip.

LAUREN helps open the door.

LAUREN. It’s so not.

JENNY lugs the ladder and paint to the shed.

JENNY (from garden). There’s still loads to do!

LAUREN. We could have rescheduled.

JENNY comes back in – banging her arm on the patio door as she passes.

JENNY. Ow! I told Sam to tidy.

LAUREN. When did he get back?

JENNY. An hour ago. No fucking warning he’d be late.

She shuts the door. An awkward beat – neither quite knowing what to say next.

He’ll be down soon.

LAUREN (trying hard). You look good.

JENNY starts to pick up baby toys from the rug, putting them into a toybox.

JENNY. I look tired.

(Noticing a spot on her dress.) And stained.

(Scratches at it.) Paint.

LAUREN. Fuck.

She pours JENNY a glass of wine.

JENNY (crossing to check). How’s the risotto?

LAUREN. I gave it a few prods.

She hands JENNY the glass.

JENNY. Thanks.

She sips.

LAUREN. Ben chose it. / Sorry.

JENNY. It’s fine.

She spots another toy and picks it up – a teddy bear.

‘Mister Bear’. / She loves it.

LAUREN. I never know what to send. It was him or tequila.

JENNY puts the bear on a shelf.

JENNY. God, not while I’m feeding.

(Relaxing slightly.) Can you imagine? Breast-milk slammers.

LAUREN. Can’t believe I haven’t met her yet.

JENNY. Sorry.

LAUREN. It’s me. I’ve been so busy. / Lots of new patients…

JENNY. No. It’s our fault. The first year, you know how it is…

LAUREN. Not really.

The toilet flushes.

JENNY. We don’t see anyone. Just other people with babies.

LAUREN. Breeders.

JENNY stirs the risotto.

You must be desperate to get back to work? / Or not?

JENNY. I miss the pupils. Having your own kid’s way more stressful.

She spots one last toy, on the kitchen floor, and picks it up. It squeaks.

Sometimes I pretend I need a poo, just so I can hide in there.

LAUREN. I’ve done that at work. A particularly tricky patient…

They smile, some of the previous tension eased, as the toilet door opens and BEN bursts out. Like LAUREN, he’s dressed up for the occasion, but his clothes are far more conventional.