Sleep. It’s the easiest thing to do. You just… close your eyes. But for so many of us, sleep seems out of our grasp. We want it, but we don’t know how to get it.

Fleur Kilpatrick cannot sleep. In her creation Insomnia Cat Came To Stay the audience is invited into the manic and tragic mind of the insomniac, a captivating 50-minute montage of uninterrupted life in which the days bleed into one another.

Staged as a one-woman show, in the back room seating an estimated 20 people, the Loop provides an intimate setting that is very appropriate for the context of the show. Kilpatrick delivers her monologue from ‘bed’, an expanse of white sheet that fills the tiny stage, symbolic of her helplessness. The text segues from the whimsical, to the philosophical, to the informative, reflecting her unhinged state of mind. Kilpatrick makes use of her sweet singing voice when speaking becomes an inadequate from of expression.

Thomas Russell’s beautiful animations are projected onto Kilpatrick’s body, in the fluid nature of the monsters that taunt an insomniac. In this case, it would seem, in the form of a large ginger cat. The scattered imagery unfolds like that of a dream. The music becomes more and more chaotic and the illustrations grow dark, culminating in an overwhelming distortion of jagged shapes.

The audience is able to picture themselves in her position and leave feeling as though they have experienced the desperation and loneliness of sleep deprivation. Kilpatrick’s performance never wavered, not even when problems with the soundtrack presented themselves on opening night.

Recommended for anyone who has been or loved an insomniac (or wept on public transport). Moving and funny this play will stay with you.