Between professionalism and over involvement: Mary Nighy & Chris Lee on Shallow Slumber

Between professionalism and over involvement: Mary Nighy & Chris Lee on Shallow Slumber

10 January, 2012
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan talks to director Mary Nighy and playwright Chris Lee about demonising social workers and the complexities of therapeutic relationships.

Playwright Chris Lee is one of those artists whose art is the more compelling because he has a passion for something other than his medium. In Chris' case it's social work, a vocation that has long been demonised; and since the cases of Victoria Climbie and Baby P, unapologetically so. The profession faces a two-pronged attack from both the press and entertainment media. Even in shows like ER where doctors and nurses are always heroic if flawed, social workers are bumbling, needy agents of the state to be dodged like bailiffs.

In a room I'd never noticed before in the upper echelons of Soho Theatre, I ask Chris if it affects how he writes. Does he feel a need to change perceptions or think about the 'worthy' tag that could follow? But the culture of social work isn't geared towards changing perceptions right now. “At the moment, the big concern is 'will I keep my job till the end of the week?'” he says. “Nothing to do with scandals in the papers but to do with the cut backs in the public sector in general. Interestingly, that seems to have displaced a kind of post Baby P fallout anxiety.”

Writing his new play, Shallow Slumber, has been a way of filtering some of those thoughts and emotions that lingered in the shadow of the Baby P story. “When you think about the media portrayal of social workers, you could say 'worthy' possibly in only a very sneering way. Social work performs the function of absorbing the projected guilt from society in general.”

It takes knocks like few other public serving professions. The myth that surround the goodness of doctors and nurses is hard to shake even though there are regularly stories about doctors and nurses intentionally or otherwise hurting patients. “For social workers,” continues Chris, “they can fail if they intervene and they can fail if they don't intervene. In some ways it's a no-win situation.”

Shallow Slumber is itself a complex play that draws attention to these complexities. But both Chris and director Mary Nighy are being pretty cagey about the non-chronological plot. At one point Chris offers to give me an idea of the story if Mary steps in to “edit” him when necessary. It's refreshing. There are no allusions to broken society or even Big Society, but writer and director emphasise the relationship between the characters over the drama. Chris' summation: “A social worker comes into the life of a woman who's just had a baby” is about all I get before he pauses and says: “There are questions asked about the boundary between professionalism, and over involvement, between therapeutic relationship and friendship”. Though when I ask about vulnerability, we find ourselves back on stereotypes.

“What struck me about the young mother,” says Mary, “is that this is a highly articulate young woman, and how unusual it is to see a young woman like that and hear her side of the story. She's charismatic and interesting in addition to all the more complicated sides of her.”

There are parallels between the characters in this two-hander, and Mary points out that “the dynamic is not fixed. In some situations one character desperately wants something from the other and the play looks at how that situation can reverse. It's not a simplistic dynamic of a damaged person needing someone to fulfil their job description.”

While it's probably not necessary to state that people who have social workers in their lives are not always abusive, working class, non-English speaking immigrants, it is still important, as Chris puts it “to try and reclaim the reality,” which is what Shallow Slumber aims to do. 


Shallow Slumber runs at Soho Theatre from 25th January.  

Click here for Theatre in London
Click here for Things to do in London

Naima Khan