Shallow Slumber

Description

Shallow Slumber is a new play by award-winning writer and social worker Chris Lee, exploring therelationship between a young mother and a social worker. Dawn never thought motherhood would feel like this. Moira never thought she'd have a case like this. Unfolding backwards to the heart-rending moment when everything changed, Shallow Slumber looks past the headlines to the lives beneath. The play tackles the topical and thorny issue of social care, intervention and trust in a contemporary and relevant social setting. Inspired by the Baby P tragedy, this powerful two-hander has an intricate, innovative structure which disturbingly charts the onset of abuse backwards, from contrition and repentance, to the breakdown of the maternal relationship. With heart-wrenchingly realistic portraits and dialogue which combines fluidity with tightness, Shallow Slumber is an accomplished piece of writing, both structurally and emotionally.

Chris Lee is an Irish playwright based in London. His plays plays include Hummingbird (The Old Red Lion, 1996), The Optimist's Daughter (Finborough Theatre, 1997), Eat the Enemy (The Old Red Lion, 199 9, and in the US, at TheaterLab, Houston, Texas), The Electrocution Of Children (Peacock, Dublin, 19 98) for which he won the Stewart Parker New Playwright Award, and The Map Maker's Sorrow (1999 also at the Peacock). In 1999 he was appointed Writer-in-Association with the Abbey Theatre. In 2000 he was awarded a Pearson New Playwright's Bursary for an attachment to the Finborough. His fifth play On Line & Paranoid in the Sentimental City (Finborough Theatre, 2000) and Vermilion Dream (Salisbury Playhouse, 2004).

Rising playright Chris Lee. -- Kate Bassett * Independent on Sunday * The piece has an inbuilt tension, and there are strong passages of writing. -- Lyn Gardner * Guardian * Voicing the unspeakable and illuminating the inexplicable. Dawn's deeply distressing closing speech prises your mind's eye open on a scene that must have been as hard for Lee to imagine as it is for us to forget. -- Bella Todd * Time Out London * Lee's play, it's accomplished. It's authentic. It's a gritty gift to actors. He's evidently talented. -- Dominic Cavendish * Daily Telegraph *