A Song for Ella Grey (NHB Modern Plays): (stage version)

By David Almond

Grey and her friends are ordinary kids from ordinary families in an ordinary world. They fall in and out of love, play music, stare at the stars, yearn for excitement, and have parties on the beautiful beaches of Northumberland. One day a stranger – a musician called Orpheus – appears on the beach, entrancing them all, but particularly Ella. Where have they come from and what path will Ella follow?
A Song for Ella Grey is a version of the myth of Orpheus that sings of the madness of youth, the ache of love, and the near-impossibility of grasping death. Zoe Cooper's stage adaptation of David Almond's award-winning novel was first produced in 2024 by Pilot Theatre, in association with Northern Stage and York Theatre Royal.
This edition includes the full text of the play along with a range of teaching materials and resources designed to help educators bring the play to life for their students.
Praise for the novel:
'Infused with lyricism and with the fire and oddness of adolescence. Fresh, involving and lucid, it is a song in itself and teens will find it fills them with poignant longing and joy' Telegraph
'The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold against a wild Northumbrian landscape: life, death, love and myths. Just wonderful' Bookseller
'Extraordinary' Metro
'Spell-binding& impossible to resist' Herald

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Feb 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781788507745

David Almond

David Almond is an experienced author who specializes in paranormal fiction. The recipient of a Hans Christian Andersen Award, a Carnegie Medal, and a Michael L. Printz Award, he currently resides in England.

Book preview

ACT ONE

Scene One

CLAIRE. It is six months earlier.

JAY. January.

CLAIRE. On a bone-cold night, and we are all huddled together on a grassy slope…

ANGELINE. Outside a pub…

CLAIRE.…That runs down to the Ouseburn river.

JAY. The Cluny.

SAM.…That still wouldn’t serve we.

ANGELINE. Even though some of us had real ID.

SAM. And all of us were rising eighteen.

ANGELINE rises, swigging from a bottle of wine. She marches about, being MR KRAKATOA, our gang’s A-level English Literature teacher.

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘Right, Year Thirteen, it is time… Time to start to listen up and write things down and hoard away all the knowledge I have generously bestowed on your adolescent heads. Because I have got to tell you… ‘

SAM (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘…Despite my easy-going nature…’

JAY (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘…which I know you have all come to relish in our last half-a-dozen orbits round the sun together…’

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘That just six short months from now all this will reach boiling point.’

JAY (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘June.’

SAM (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘A levels.’

ELLA (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘The Big Reckoning.’

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘The Great Sorting.’

SAM, ANGELINE and JAY (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘The boiling!’

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘When you will be required to conjure arguments out of air, thin air! On John Donne’s souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d and Milton’s account of the tempting of Eve.’

The wine continues to be passed round through the following:

CLAIRE. ‘Because Mr Krakatoa wouldn’t know any better…’

SAM (agreeing). ‘…he’s just a teacher…’

CLAIRE. ‘Because the exams he suddenly seems so obsessed with are not what is going to count in this next part of our lives anyway.’

ANGELINE. ‘Aye, mebbe not for you…’

CLAIRE. ‘Aye, because I don’t need a constellation of A-stars to be a poet, do I?’

CLAIRE swigs from the bottle.

‘Oh…

The north.

Why do we live in the frozen north where nothing ever happened?

Why not Italy or Greece or somewhere else, where the sun beats down, the wine costs cents and stories start?’

JAY. ‘Oh but we do.’

SAM. ‘Eh?’

JAY. ‘We are sitting on the same mass of land I mean as those… because it was all part of the same supercontinent once, which was Pangea…’

SAM and CLAIRE groan, they have heard JAY’s lectures on geology before.

SAM. ‘Ladies and gentleman, Jay Blakeley, our very own budding geologist.’

Nevertheless JAY persists, raising his voice slightly…

JAY. ‘Which existed during the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic eras.’

SAM. ‘Alright, you’re not at Cambridge yet, pal…’

JAY. ‘Because it was drawn together from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous Period…’

SAM. ‘Fascinating.’

JAY. ‘Because it was this one huge continent drawn together from all those separate land masses…’ (Pointing at each of them as ANGELINE says the next bit.)

CLAIRE. And we, Jay, Ella, Angeline and Sam.

ANGELINE. And Claire.

JAY. ‘…fused into one huge mass.’

ANGELINE. Who had all been friends since long before English Literature A level.

JAY. Who had been close as kin since primary.

They have somehow all coalesced through the last bit to form one huddle of teenagers most solidly.

CLAIRE. And we were all. On that bone-cold night, like we said, fed up to the back teeth with the grim prophesies of teachers set on spoiling our fun, passing around a bottle of Tesco’s Finest Valpolicella, contemplating the idea of that huge and ancient continent, breath swirling round us.

SAM (to JAY). ‘Think you might be a bit pissed, mate.’

JAY. And we did all laugh.

CLAIRE. Only in that moment.

ANGELINE. On that bank.

CLAIRE. By our river, by the pub that wouldn’t serve us. When I was leaned back, my legs stretched out.

JAY. The mass of us all tucked together like that.

CLAIRE. Ella leaning back on me, our fingers interlaced.

A song, far away at first.

ANGELINE. That was when we first heard / it…

CLAIRE. When she heard it first:

ELLA. ‘What the hell is that?’

SAM. ‘Is what?’

ELLA. ‘Is that.’

JAY. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

ELLA. ‘That. Listen.’

CLAIRE. We listened.

ANGELINE. We heard something…

SAM. And then we didn’t.

CLAIRE. ‘There is something.’

SAM. ‘Aye, mebbe.’

CLAIRE. ‘It’s canny quiet though…’

SAM. ‘Mebbe there is something.’

ANGELINE. You jumping to agree with Claire, as usual, even though I am pretty sure you could hear nowt. But I was beginning to make something out: ‘That kind of singing or something?’

ELLA removes her hand from CLAIRE’s, moves away. CLAIRE watches her.

A song becomes a voice, but still no words.

ELLA. ‘Like singing.’

They all try to listen for a few moments as the voice gets a little clearer. Maybe there are snatches of words now, but nothing more.

The song starts to shift as it is described.

CLAIRE. But also like a mix-up of the water sounds…

SAM. The drunks…

ANGELINE. The air on our faces, bits of birdsong and traffic…

CLAIRE. Like all of those familiar things, but with a new note in them…

ANGELINE. And so that was why we did get up then and started searching for its source.

SAM. Inside the Stepney Stables, tethered horses stomping ice-slushed puddles.

ANGELINE. Down on the quayside, a busker bundled up, ‘The Blaydon Races’ on penny whistle rising to join the sound of it as two women with orange legs danced under a streetlight.

Echoing:

SAM. Under the echoing bridge, in front of a poster.

CLAIRE. That poster that always gave me the creeps.

ANGELINE. That stated clearly, in big letters:

CLAIRE and ANGELINE. ‘Do not stop here, do not say Essalamus three times.’

CLAIRE. ‘Essalamus Essalamus Essalmus!’

SAM rushes at CLAIRE and grabs her round the waist / tickles her.

SAM. ‘You know what will happen!’

Through the following, a song gets louder and louder. Any lyrics remain indistinct. Nothing to anchor it, it keeps shifting and changing.

CLAIRE. Us all searching the source of that sound. Until we all found ourselves drawn back together at the outpipe, our river spinning and spiralling and gurgling as it flowed out from beneath our city. Gushed metal bars of locked gates. Us all gazing at the bolts and massive padlocks, the rusted warning sign with skull-and-crossbones, arched tunnel beyond. Deep darkness and the song echoing out louder and louder.

JAY. And I did watch the dark silhouette of a skein of swans suddenly swoop down.

The shadow of a skein of swans swooping down, they all duck.

Rushed the water.

And then stopped.

The song stops.

CLAIRE. Nothing again.

ANGELINE. ‘God, remember how scary this place used to be.’

SAM. ‘Remember staring in, peeling our eyes to see who could see the furthest.’

CLAIRE. ‘Seeing all those fiends