REVIEW: Woman in Mind – Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Alan Ayckbourn’s complex and unconventional exploration of one woman’s psychological unravelling, Woman in Mind is currently experiencing a revival in this 40th anniversary tour. The question is should it? If you are looking for a insightful depiction of mental health through the lens of the 21st Century then maybe no, if it’s a compelling, absorbing and beautifully acted piece of theatre, then it’s a resounding yes.
It’s all a bit Alice down the rabbit hole as we watch as Susan (Sheridan Smith) a woman stuck in a loveless marriage to a mind-numbingly dull vicar husband (Tim McMullen), mother to an estranged son (Taylor Uttley), endurer of a prattling and morose live-in sister-in-law (Louise |Brealey) and repeater of domestic drudgery, psychologically unravels after a freak accident with a garden rake.
Susan creates a fantasy life, a life much longed for where she swaps her dreary husband for an amorously over-attentive one, and her estranged son for a bubbly, exuberantly affectionate daughter. Helping her through the quagmire is Bill (Romesh Ranganathan) the bemused, bumbling but well-meaning local doctor.
The action plays out on Soutra Gilmour’s striking set design. It opens on Susan sprawled in front of the safety curtain post-accident, which then slightly raises to admit Susan’s fantasy family to the stage. When the curtain eventually rises, we are confronted by the towering, overgrown green hedges of Susan’s garden framed by quasi-psychedelic projections.
The climate has changed in every sense in the forty years since this was written, but especially in the dialogue around and portrayal of mental health and Ayckbourn’s approach to both the subject of mental health and female domestic life is showing its forty years, at times it is uncomfortably simplistic and outdated. Should Susan’s or indeed all women’s level of fulfilment be measured against their success as a wife and mother? That said, there are, as always in Ayckbourn’s work, insightful and affecting moments as we watch a woman, who like many before and since, lose her way in mid-life. Her realisation that her problems may be largely self-created are painful to watch, you can’t help but feel her hurt.
The greatest asset the production has is its phenomenal cast, who are utterly compelling. Smith never leaves the stage for the entirety of the two hours. She jokes, she mugs, she bitches, she treads the path between being bitingly barbed and painfully perplexed in her fantasy life with the surest of hands. The ever-watchable Tim McMullen as husband Gerald, a man so vanilla, he admonishes a particularly acidic outburst from his wife with a “now, now”, is a brilliant contrast to Smith’s live-wire Susan, as is Louise Brealey as sister-in-law Muriel, a woman perpetually trying to contact her dead husband and provider of endless, inedible fare. The biggest revelation is Ranganathan as the bumbling Bill, who utilises his impeccable comic timing to maximum effect.
The line between fantasy and reality is as blurred for the audience as it is for Susan in this 40th anniversary production. There are flashes of Ayckbourn’s brilliance throughout and coupled with a first-rate cast, allow Woman in Mind to remain a challenging and thoroughly absorbing work.
Runs until March 2026 | Image: Marc Brenner
