Review: Three More Sleepless Nights - The Jewish Chronicle

Caryl Churchill’s 1980 work falls into that category of painful-to-watch relationship plays. Let us call it the “domestic”. They are usually set entirely within the home and the audience are cast as living room or (as is the case here) bedroom voyeurs. These are the kind of plays which, if while watching you recognise your own relationship, you are probably in deep trouble.

Gareth Machin’s production — in the new 6pm slot at the National — has taken up residence on the set of the venue’s current production of Racine’s Phèdre. It is a surreal sight to see chintzy 1980s bedroom furniture perched on a classical stone-hewn terrace. But then Phèdre, in which a stepmother falls in love with her stepson, is probably the ultimate “domestic”.

Churchill’s play is constructed of three scenes totalling no more than 55 minutes. They each explore the interaction and communication — or lack of communication — of three couples.

We begin in the middle of an argument that typifies dysfunctional marriages. Margaret (Lindsey Coulson) is sitting up in bed while Frank (Ian Hart) changes into his pyjamas. Margaret accuses Frank of having an affair. Frank pleads outraged innocence. He has been down the pub with Charley. She should ask Charley if she does not believe him. Frank has never been unfaithful. Apart from that one time. And Margaret can talk — it is obvious she fancies Charley. Margaret likes Charley, it is true, but it is Frank she loves.

Short, interrupted sentences are fired like bullets. This is typically economic Churchill dialogue — most recently seen in her controversial work Seven Jewish Children. As with Pinter, it can appear highly mannered. The first impression is that people do not talk like this. But the second, and much truer, is that the dialogue is brilliantly observed. This is the way real people talk. It is people — characters — on stage who we rarely hear talking like this. Margaret and Frank’s row gets ugly. When Margaret questions Frank’s ability to provide for the family, Frank deploys the unwritten rule recognised only by abusive husbands — if offended, the man is perfectly within his rights to show his wife a clenched fist.

The second couple, Pete (Paul Ready) and Dawn (Hattie Morahan), are the antithesis of Frank and Margaret. For minutes on end we watch them sleeplessly toss and turn in their bed. It is a dialogue of sighs and groans, of his questioning moans and whimpers answered by her whimpering moans.

When the dialogue comes it is like two soliloquies that happen to be spoken in the same room. Her declarations of being afraid are answered infuriatingly by his nerdy description of the plot to the movie Alien. He brings in food. They eat. They return to bed. She takes a knife with her from the plate.

Churchill’s not particularly profound lesson is that there is more than one way to express despair. The play seems to be an experiment in structure about how drama can come in a series of shouted insults or the silent tension of nothing happening. Although, interestingly, both kinds here rely on the threat of violence.

And then there is the third way. It is delivered in the final scene depicting Pete and Margaret, now in bed together. They declare themselves to be the kind of people who know how to change. Then they lapse into their respective behaviour patterns — his, now familiar, inability to emotionally engage set against her insecurity. As a species we are, it seems, locked into our modus operandi.

It all makes sense in a fitfully fascinating and dreary sort of way. The result is as much anthropological as it is theatrical.

Someone should put this play on in a zoo.