Writer: Alan Ayckbourn
Director: Michael Longhurst
Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind is a slippery play, and while it fits the mould of the domestic tragi-comedies that the writer has made his own, the emphasis on female mental health and the mid-life desperation of someone realising all their dreams are lost requires careful balance. Michael Longhurst’s revival at the Duke of York’s Theatre has certainly attracted a starry cast, including an anchoring central performance from Sheridan Smith, yet the pacing, as well as the management of the play’s complex fantasy elements, loses the delicate satire in Ayckbourn’s writing and leaves the tragedy rather flat.
Suffering a head injury when she steps on a garden rake, Susan’s recovery is marred by a new world that springs up around her, one in which the perfect family life she never had increasingly consumes her attention. But as the real world intrudes with her dull vicar husband, errant son and the attentions of the local doctor, Susan starts to realise that even the dream of being unquestioningly adored is as unmanageable as reality.
There are some really strong ideas in Longhurst’s production, which tours to Sunderland and Glasgow following its West End run, and although Susan is never quite as sympathetic as perhaps her creator intends – here a little callous, often dismissive rather than ground down – Smith’s control of Susan’s changing states through the play is well considered. And the audience doesn’t need to love her unconditionally to recognise the strain of a vivid woman trapped in routines and sameness that make her embrace the sunny freedom of the blissful life she never lived. Even as it starts to come apart later in the show, Smith’s escalation of Susan’s disarray is always believable.
Romesh Ranganathan as local doctor Bill also delivers the finest of the secondary performances, nailing the humorous lines and moments of awkward male Britishness with the finesse you would expect from a comic actor – earning almost the only laughs of the night. But Longhurst rather loses control of the pitch and cohesion between the rest of the cast and, while well-acted by Sule Rimi, Tim McMullan, and Louise Brealey especially, each member of the cast seems to be in a slightly different version of Woman in Mind than everyone else, and the production is never sure whether it is playing tragedy, comedy or surrealist illusion.
As a result, it becomes rather static with Smith in particular required to sit for most of the production in various lawn furniture or lying flat on the stage, obscuring the view for many in the unraked stalls of the Duke of York’s Theatre. It is never clear why Longhurst chooses to play the first two scenes in front of a floral safety curtain with those words printed on it – a heavy metaphor – limiting the staging space and losing vital early dynamism before suddenly revealing the fuller overgrown garden behind it mid-scene. Lighting later replaces graphics as a means of signalling the transitions between Susan’s mental states, but why not use that from the start?
And given the relatively nuanced approach to mental health that Ayckbourn writes, is it really appropriate to keep playing Crazy by Patsy Cline? The show never really recovers from its flattened start and uncoordinated approach, feeling long and laboured despite its relatively easy 2-hour and 20-minute running time. A strong vehicle for Smith and Ranganathan, but, like Susan’s life, perhaps it could have been better.
Runs until 28 February 2026 tours to Sunderland Empire and Theatre Royal Glasgow
