It's on sleepless nights that we review the parade of our accomplishments, neuroses and missed opportunities. Sex apart, the shared routines of sleeplessness tend to be cranky and garbled, and it’s the politics of these routines that Caryl Churchill unpacks in this play from 1980.

First we see Frank (Ian Hart) and Margaret (Lindsey Coulson) arguing. The accusations flow thick and fast. Frank repeatedly tells his wife to “shut it”, then insults her housekeeping skills. She nags about his drinking and infidelities. It’s a roilingly competitive relationship, characterised by overlapping speeches of complaint.

Next we shift to Pete (Paul Ready) and Dawn (Hattie Morahan), who by contrast seem almost tranquillised. When they speak, they fail to communicate, as though using two different languages.

An escapist, Pete relates everything to films — Alien, in particular — and has no vocabulary with which to respond to Dawn’s nervous exclamations “I feel completely unreal” and “I think I’m dead”. She fondles a knife. He doesn’t even notice and makes gassy after-dinner sounds — “Mmmm”, “Ahhhhh”. The scene ends with a crimson stain spidering across the counterpane.

Finally, as if playing musical beds, Pete and Margaret are together. They assure each other that they have learnt from past crises. But their rapport is haunted by familiar patterns of behaviour. Relationships, we’re to understand, do not accommodate change; even when we start afresh, we are condemned to relapse into the same old roles.

To emphasise this doomy continuity, the set throughout is the same, even though the action occupies three distinct rooms. In fact, it’s the set of the National’ s current Phèdre, albeit with the addition of a sharply lit and surprisingly unrumpled double bed.

While that’s not a problem, the play would work better in a more intimate space than the 890–seat Lyttelton. The actors are eloquently uncomfortable, especially the underappreciated Hart and sharp-edged Coulson, but the writing lacks the energy and imagination of Churchill’s best work and it feels more like an authorial exercise — a trio of interesting doodles — than a fully developed piece of theatre.
In rep until 25 August. Information: 020 7452 3000.