Bed - 'Imagining the dream-world'

Tue 24 Jan 2012

Jim Cartwright’s 'Bed' was originally written in and about the 1980s. The play’s underlying message was a bold comment about the state of the nation during that period; the last time a Conservative government was in parliament. The 2011 riots in London and elsewhere inspired the Old Bomb theatre to bring Bed into the 21st century and use it as a vehicle for comment about England today.

Bed is a visually beautiful play filled with images of both surreal and abstract form. It concerns a dreamy world in which seven elderly people lay in a giant bed and hunger for the comfort of sleep. But sleep evades them as they reminisce; getting carried away by and absorbed in each other’s dreams and memories. The disembodied head of an angry youth lurks in the background. He is poised ready to sabotage any effort to drift into slumber, though he craves sleep desperately himself.

The set design centres on the idea of a dream world. In dreams thoughts and fears manifest themselves in unexpected guises. In Bed mountains of precariously stacked chairs and chests of drawers hang over the uneasy sleepers. The wooden pieces creak and groan always threatening to collapse onto those in the bed below so they can never truly relax and rest. In this dreamscape ordinary household objects transform into surreal representations of everyday worries and fears.

The set reflects the emotional state of the uneasy sleepers. As they continue along their journey together, sometimes laughing, sometimes in tears the space becomes increasingly chaotic. Bizarre objects and traditional British artefacts wait their turn, hidden in secret places. It is as if there is nothing that the dreamers cannot call into existence from beneath the giant bed sheets. Old Bomb’s new 'Bed' is performed in this odd land, where the laws which govern Normality are appropriately transgressed.

- Ruby Savage (Designer)