This Must Be the Place

Brad Birch, Kenny Emson

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781780018768
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

This Must Be the Place is a play comprising two short ballads about migration, missed connections, and life on the edge of respectability.

Two friends, fugitives from their problems, try and start again in the big smoke but find themselves waiting on the margins still. A man in the midst of crisis tries for a clean break from technology, connectivity and the pressures of city life.

Brad Birch and Kenny Emson's This Must Be the Place was first performed at Latitude Festival in July 2016, before transferring to the 2017 VAULT Festival, London, where it was named Show of the Year.

This is not a London story.

No timely tale of protests on the street.

Nor night-bus-puke recollections.

No rising rents and financial complaints.

No.

None of that here.

No bankers, nor hipsters, nor tourists who just don’t know where the fuck to stand on an escalator.

This is not a London story.

Though it does start in London…

He stands.

And he could be us.

Or us him.

There is a quality.

One we recognise.

And that thought crosses his mind too.

How very alike we all are.

How similar.

Let’s call him Adam.

Just to give him a name.

Something for us to remember him by.

So Adam stands on Hungerford Bridge and looks down the winding river that weaves its way through the capital city. The lights, the offices, the banks and tower blocks, the flats owned by Russian and Saudi businessmen who only visit once a year.

It is summer.

And the day is slipping silently into night.

There is a nip to the air. A summer nip.

On another night he might have regretted his choice of H&M vest top and skinny jeans, the plimsolls, the half socks that will leave no tan line.

So maybe there are hipsters in this tale after all.

But Adam isn’t really one of those people.

He just wears the uniform.

To fit in.

To conform.

To disappear.

But tonight.

Tonight with its nip.

He is very much here. Very much present.

He can feel it.

Life.

Everywhere.

All around him.

He is halfway down the bridge…

ADAM I.

Not he.

Let’s say I.

I am halfway down the bridge, past the beggars, the musicians, the Big Issue sellers.

I am leant against the rail.

Occasional couples walking past turn to see me. They have a look of worry on their face.

Doubt.

Fear.

They have seen these things before. Either on television or in films. In fictional stories in the books they have been bought for Christmas by parents who don’t read blurbs.

But this fear. This doubt.

It is contagious. You can see it in their eyes.

Could it be happening here?

Even here?

An iPhone is in my hand. Like so many iPhones.

I imagine there are iPhones in hands right now. Right here. Even in this place where the reception is weak.

Even when they should be turned off rather than switched to silent.

But there is a chance of a message, a text, a tweet, a post, a new status.

A connection.

A name.

Adam stands.

I stand.

But in a way.

We.

We all stand.

And for the first time we start to feel the weight of it.

The iPhone.

The device they rent us for a small and not-too-inconveniencing fee per month.

This door to another world.

A world of every piece of information we could ever want at the touch of a button.

Every image.

Every sound.

Every memory.

Of kitten memes and terrorist attacks and thoughts and feelings and wrongs and rights and opinions and drunken rants we’ll regret tomorrow when we read them back in the cold light of day.

This distraction.

This distance.

I shut my eyes. Take a breath. And let it drop.

The amputation of a limb.

The loss of a parent.

The conversation as we part.

The fading light.

An...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Welcome to VAULT
• Original Production
• Characters
• This Must Be the Place
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information