Review: Work While They Sleep, Camden People’s Theatre

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that feels uniquely modern: the pressure to optimise every waking moment, to turn rest itself into labour. Work While They Sleep leans into this anxiety, offering a surreal exploration of productivity taken to its extreme.

The piece centres on W (Gabi Flares), a self-employed labourer driven by a desire for greatness, and a narrator (Jenny Futuro) who functions as something akin to W’s conscience. When W is presented with an opportunity to maximise her output by entering a sleepwalking trance, in which her body continues to work while she rests, she seizes it. In this altered state emerges M, an uncanny inversion of W: confident and eerily detached. Where W stresses and micromanages, M is cool and collected with a grin across her face. When M’s presence strengthens, it becomes increasingly clear that this deal is too good to be true.

Though Futuro’s narrator frames the action, the show remains firmly rooted in W’s experience. Other figures hover at the edges, a husband discussed but never seen, and a “Cowgirl Coach” who appears through multimedia, but the isolation feels intentional. Told through an absurdist lens, the production relies heavily on physicality to convey the cyclical, draining nature of labour. At its best, this is striking, with Flares delivering a deeply embodied performance that captures both strain and surrender.

However, Work While They Sleep struggles with pacing and clarity. The narrative moves swiftly from introduction to climax, leaving little room to fully chart W’s deterioration under the weight of hustle culture, and the ending comes quickly. Rather than a gradual erosion, her shift feels abrupt, which mutes emotional impact. Similarly, while the script leans into symbolism, it never quite sharpens its central metaphor. Repeated motifs gesture toward futility, but their overuse turns what was purposeful into monotonous.

At just 45 minutes, the show feels paradoxically underdeveloped. There is a sense that the material could either be expanded to allow its ideas to breathe, or more tightly refined to better serve its runtime. That said, there are clear strengths: the multimedia elements  by Nick Bush, particularly the Cowgirl Coach, are slick and tonally precise, walking a fine line between comic and ominous, while the opening monologue immediately draws the audience in. More moments of this novelty would help energise the script and focus in on the areas it excels in.

Work While They Sleep offers a compelling premise and moments of real theatrical flair, but would benefit from greater narrative depth and variation. With sharper focus and a willingness to push beyond repetition, it could more fully realise the unsettling world it begins to build.

Written by: Filipe Pereira
Translated by: Jenny Futuro
Directed by: Luke Lewin Davies
Producer: Lucrezia Galeone
Dramaturg: Ezra Baudou
Composer: Calum Perrin
AV Designer: Nick Bush
Stage Manager: Julia Rahn

Work While They Sleep has completed its run at Camden People’s Theatre