Elephant and Castle

Presented by Tom Adams and Lillian Henley

The first time my wife and I shared a bed I told her “I want to get in a wardrobe and take you to Elephant and Castle”. I was asleep.

Do you tell the truth when you talk in your sleep? Are sleep-talkers always on the verge of admitting some dark desire or, even more unthinkable, telling the person we share a bed with what we really think of them? That’s the dangerous premise behind Elephant and Castle, a new, experimental show that springs from three years of recorded sleep talk. From there, it becomes tender, funny, uncomfortable and dark too, as the mutterings never quite take the form of honest coherence. But does the incoherence conceal the truth? Is there something struggling to be said? Something perhaps that is painful and potentially disastrous for this relationship? Using live music, song and verbatim sleep recordings, Elephant and Castle is a gig-theatre show about the joy and terror of sharing your bed with a sleep-talker.