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The Sleepers Den

Riverside Studios, London, 28 September - 16 October 2010

cast:
Cler Stephens, Charlotte Moore, Wynfydd Chase, Ellen Ceri Lloyd, Matthew Ward, Mark Starr

directed by
Adam Spreadbury-Maher

There are sentimental reasons for Riverside Studios to revive Peter Gill's plays. The director/playwright was the venue's founder and he directed many productions there from the mid-seventies.

It's fitting that his work should be re-assessed but this first play, written in 1965, has few obvious merits beyond an interest for the enthusiast or completist in Gills' earliest stumblings.

The Sleepers Den is a crafted piece but, in keeping with its central image, it moves at a somnolent pace, not hurried any by Adam Spreadbury-Maher's laid-back direction.

Julia Berndt's natty zig-zag set creates little pockets of interest, just as the play does in its description of an impoverished family situation in Gill's native Cardiff in the fifties. Inevitable conflict arises from the soul-grinding daily routine of care and survival and an undertow of intrusive catholicism in the form of a nosy visitor from the League of Mary (Cler Stephens).

Charlotte Moore's worn-down Mrs Shannon struggles to dispense life's neccesities to dependent generations - an inert, ailing mother (Wynfydd Chase) and daughter on the brink of teenage rebellion (Ellen Ceri Lloyd) - and a working brother (Matthew Ward) content to be waited upon.

All-out madness beckons but it's slow progress and light relief is in short supply. The cast succeeds in creating a credible family and the production paints a convincing picture of the gloom of Welsh poverty in a world of post-war austerity.

The play reeks of kitchen sink, a study in naturalism with little in the way of the theatrical bloom that was to come in Gill's later works. It comes as no surprise that Gill was directing D H Lawrence's hitherto forgotten canon of plays at around the time of writing The Sleepers Den, with The Collier's Friday Night frequently coming to mind.

Good Night Out Presents, Spreadbury-Maher's company resident at Kilburn's Cock Tavern Theatre, returns later in the month with the second of Peter Gill's plays, Over Gardens Out.

- Simon Thomas