Woman in Mind review, Duke of York’s Theatre – Sheridan Smith’s wit can’t quite elevate this frivolous fare

Last year saw a landmark revival of Sarah Kane’s much-studied, uncompromisingly minimalist depression play 4:48 Psychosis. Imagine its polar opposite and you might well wind up with Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 comedy Woman in Mind, a cheerily maximalist story of female mental disintegration. Sheridan Smith (Funny Girl) brings both wit and emotional depth to its central role of a suburban housewife who loses her grip on reality after an embarrassing mishap with a garden rake. But Smith can’t do much to disguise the fact that this is frivolous fare, unlikely to become a set text for students of either contemporary theatre or psychology.

Director Michael Longhurst’s bright, punchy staging initially makes a pretty good case for reviving this seldom-staged play. Smith has a lightly manic, winsome quality as Susan, who’s labouring under the delusion that her ordinary suburban garden is actually a vast country estate, home to tennis courts, a lake, a dishy husband – and two preppy children who are far more perfect that anything she managed to produce with her real-life hubbie, the droning vicar Gerald (a wonderfully pedestrian Tim McMullan).

The comedian Romesh Ranganathan turns in a broad and often very funny performance as her doctor, Bill, who tries to anchor Susan to reality, while being utterly enthralled by her particular brand of whimsical insanity. And Louise Brealey is hilarious as Muriel, the put-upon sister-in-law who produces Earl Grey omelettes and maudlin ghost stories, both of which threaten to send Susan into even more of a mad fury. Soutra Gilmour’s vivid design makes the pastoral scenery behind Susan melt and swirl into psychedelic shapes, while her trim garden soon grows into a wild mess of tangled reeds.

Ayckbourn is on fertile ground here, exploring the oft-trodden Freudian territory of repression, the subconscious, and the wild ideas that spring from it. There’s something compelling about his tale of a stifled woman trying to escape into vivid daydreams, only to find that they too have become polluted by the same darkness and dullness of her everyday life. Being a middle-aged woman is a prison here, and her mercilessly tedious family are her jailers.

Still, it feels that Ayckbourn is ultimately more interested in the creative possibilities of madness than in probing too deeply into its underlying causes. Susan eventually dreams up a whole wedding (which is assumed to be the summit of female happiness in this play) that descends into a nightmarish horse race, in a finale that canters away from exploring her inner world, rather than towards it.

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Ayckbourn’s got an astonishing 92 plays to his name, and Woman in Mind isn’t the first time his overactive imagination has explored the boundaries between fantasy and reality (his 1969 kids’ play Ernie’s Incredible Illucinations takes that title). There’s clearly something that intrigues him about injecting deep surrealism into the conventional, middle-class settings his plays so often inhabit – the weirdest moments of Woman in Mind genuinely are jolting, as Susan swaps making cups of coffee for brewing dark rebellion. Still, taken as an exploration of mental illness, this play’s blunt, larky approach feels both dated and faintly tasteless. Smith also played a troubled protagonist in 2024’s disappointing Opening Night: hopefully, her next stage role will see her play a woman who’s fully in command of her wits.

At Duke of York’s Theatre, London, until 28 February; Sunderland Empire, 4-7 March; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 10-14 March; tickets and information here