A play about insomnia is welcome relief for many of us who stew, bug-eyed, into the small hours and know that sleeplessness bears its own maddening drama. Directed by Mike Alfreds, it begins promisingly, with five characters in pyjamas making snarky asides about other people’s useless advice for their malaise (yoga, magnesium flakes, breathing and body scans). They pull up chairs and begin speaking in alternating snatches of their nightly torments, daily burdens, former lives and past loves.
The central conceit around the lack of sleep and its effects is disappointingly underexplored and seems, instead, like an excuse for characters to give us personal histories and disjointed vignettes. They do not interact with each other but give us thoughts and memories in isolation; as one talks the others recline in states of anguish – head in hands, slumped, hugging a chair or the wall. Mystifyingly, they speak of themselves in the first and third person, sometimes switching between the two in the same sentence, which is jarring and brings oddness to the storytelling.
