I’m sharing with you an excerpt from Emma Zadlow’s playscript, Fridge. This sounds fantastic, but I’m a bit scarred from studying plays at a-levels.
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About:
Alice hasn’t been home for a while – for seven years, in fact. But when her little sister Lo tries to take her own life, she has to return to the life she left behind. The change of scenery from London to Norfolk proves quite the culture shock, however, and Alice has to confront what she left behind all those years ago.
The sisters’ relationship hasn’t evolved in Alice’s absence, and when she steps through the door she’s plunged back into the same world she escaped from. Set against Norfolk’s bleak landscapes, but masquerading as childhood nostalgia, Fridge is an all-too-familiar exploration of the broken promises of youth, and a bitter exposition of a generation left behind.
SCENE ONE
My Walls
A fridge stands in darkness. The sound of the countryside can be heard – birds, etc. Slight pause. The fridge suddenly jerks and shakes. Someone is inside.
LO (from inside the fridge): Alice! Alice! Let me out! It’s not funny any more!
(The sound of laughs and giggles.) It’s not funny!
(A knocking is heard. More shaking, until there is one last jerk. Suddenly, the door swings open and out is thrown lo. She falls on to her face. She sits up. She is not used to the light, and her eyes ache. Time has passed. She sees bottles of milkshake in neat lines left for her. She takes a bottle. She opens it with her mouth, tearing the plastic with her teeth and unscrewing the top with ease. She’s done this before. She stares at a note in her hand. She crumples it into a ball suddenly. She sits cross-legged. She takes the milkshake bottle and gulps it down in one go. This should be uncomfortable to watch. It dribbles down her neck. She finishes it. She exhales and swigs.)
I want to be just like my…
(Shadows stream on the floor. The birdsong slows down to an un- natural slow speed.)
Alice? (The wind howls.) When it’s this quiet all the time, you can’t help but hear voices, right? (The wind howls louder. She peers under the fridge and squeezes her hand underneath.) One time, Alice put me in the fridge be- cause she told me the sea tale of the Old Mermaid of Shipden.
This is the true story of a girl
Who was banished underwater.
So her people stopped calling her ‘daughter’. She lived there alone
And above her lost ships would groan;
The sea winds would howl
And the seals would growl
At her shedding tail
Cos she failed.
She wanted to return to the land.
The North Sea raged
As she grew ever more caged.
With hull upon hull
Her collection did grow,
And they sunk to her below.
So, the Shipden mermaid wore Legs made of wood
From long-gone shipwrecks
To come at last ashore –
To find her family’s door
At last. But the folk of old Shipden
Said she hunted for the most beautiful hair From little human girls.
Then she’d scalp and steal
The hair and wear them in her lair.
But she wore her wooden legs
Of the wrecks
And came to the town,
To the door of the family
That sent her down
To that watery cell.
She knocked and knocked,
But they wouldn’t open it.
Pleading, screaming,
Her shriek with a creak
Sent the entire town
To the murky depths.
And she returned to her shell;
There she wept,
Waiting for another door
To knock on
On shore.
So, she went outside when I couldn’t. But I think it was just to have a smoke with Chrissy by the guinea-pig hutch.
(A knock comes from the gloom.)
Fridge, Emma Zadlow – available now!
Sample used with permission from the publisher.
