When we walked into the theatre, the cast of Bed were all, fittingly, in a gigantic bed onstage. For about 50 minutes they stood there in bed (the bed was a backdrop and they were sandwiched between it and a sheet acting as the duvet), with underwear strewn about the pillows and a creepy bug-eyed head watching over them while they dreamt.

The play introduces a driver,  Charles (Harry Burke), who carried the rest of the sleepers around the picturesque England of his youth – with ‘Rule Britannia’ playing over his dialogue and frequent interjections from the rest of the characters. This became quickly sinister, as the music warped as England grew more modernistic and corrupted in his recollection, and he lamented the current state of the country.

The play followed this patterns in a series of vignettes about the characters, who were all in the later parts of their lives.

Next came the Sermon Head (Shimal De Silvai), a disembodied head which watched over the sleepers, envied their sleep and seemed to influence their dreams. This included the Captain (Kim Alexander), whose stream of consciously styled monologue evoked the thoughts you of a person struggling in vain to fall asleep.

Around the eponymous bed, the rest of the stage consisted paint-splattered sheets and stained plastic chairs hung from the ceiling. This worked effectively to bring attention to the characters in the bed as they quarrelled, reminisced and dreamt about their pasts.

An old couple (Ellie Cole and Henry Phillips), marked one of the play’s happier elements, linked as they were by a sweet co-dependency. They went off to fetch a glass of water together, but kept getting distracted by each other. The pair deserve credit for their moving performances – the sensitivity of the acting was highly touching.

Two characters – the Spinster (Emilia Power), and the Bosom Lady (Becky Shepherdson) both gave solid performances, of people looking back on their past with regret and joy respectively. The Bosom Lady’s nostalgia for her glory days of entertaining crowds and the parties she’d attended was skillful evoked, as did the bitterness and resentment of all the Spinster had missed out on.

The highlight of the show, however, was Marjorie (Maya Yousif), who portrayed a housewife who had been beaten down by life, living in a loveless marriage and who had given birth to a stillborn child. As she spoke abbout feeling cold inside after her husband left her at a hospital, she squirmed as seemed to both look out to the audience and simultaneously avoid our gaze. It was hard to watch. The most moving part of the show, it brought it to a satisfying conclusion. 

Special mention has to be made to the lighting and sound effects, without which the play would have lost a great deal; the projections of snowflakes or pillow feathers falling, the projection of the crossword puzzle, or the disco made scenes feel three-dimensional. At times, the play was cacophonous, and the delivery of the monologues felt a little hard to follow, but the acting, and the moving dialogues made the production as a whole a success, and I would highly recommend it as a way to spend an evening