Review: The Sleepers Den, Riverside Studios

Written for Time Out

While Peter Gill's latest directorial venure plays at the Bush, a mile down the road his 1969 debut play gets a tender, if not exactly prescient, revival at the venue he founded.

A peephole into the daily frind of a debt-ridden, working-class household in Cardiff, The Sleepers Den proves a delicate portrait of familial obligation, in which cohabitation is both curse and comfort. For Mrs Shannon (Charlotte Moore, touchingly frayed), the stagnant living room has become the whole world. Julia Berndt's musty design has others materialise on its doorstep and dissolve on leaving.

Gill's play reamins a fascinatingly intricate study. Silences hang heavy and morbid, suggesting lives more endured than lived. Here overall atmosphere wins out over action. More forensic finesse, however, and Adam Spreadbury-Maher's production would really crackle.