Alan Ayckbourn is frequently referred to as ‘the English Chekhov’, a reflection of the melancholy that lies at the heart of his plays and their characters.
But that’s not the whole story. Chekhov did not go in for the sort of wacky high concepts that Ayckbourn has been wedded to throughout his bewilderingly prolific career. It’s unlikely, for instance, that there is another playwright on the planet who has written more shows about robots than him (he’s written something like seven plays about robots).
These days the 86-year-old Ayckbourn is a relatively fringe concern, his latest plays only really staged at his beloved Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. But in the 1980s he was at his commercial peak, firing out hit after hit.
Some of these works have settled down as modest contemporary classics (notably 1984’s A Chorus of Disapproval and 1987’s A Small Family Business). On the outskirts of this group is 1985’s Woman in Mind, which has been a West End hit a couple of times before, in productions directed by Ayckbourn himself.
Here, Michael Longhurst does the honour, in an alluring revival that thrills for a good while before miring in concept.
Sheridan Smith plays Susan, an embittered middle-aged mother who begins the play having taken a bump to the head that’s caused her perception of reality to become unmoored. She believes she’s a model parent with a dream life, living in a huge country house, quaffing Champagne all day and being told how wonderful she is by her adoring family .
She is describing all this to Bill (Romesh Ranganathan), the doctor who has come to examine her head injury. He is clearly humouring her as she talks about her swimming pool and tennis courts and the perfect family – played by Chris Jenks, Safia Oakley-Green and Sule Rimi – who we can see but are getting distinct ‘not actually real’ vibes from.
And thus it proves: before long Susan’s ‘real’ family intrudes, headed by her windbag vicar husband Gerald (Tim McMullen), who she drawlingly tears strips off while yearning for his imaginary counterpart.
This is an extremely handsome production: I loved Soutra Gilmour’s lush but menacing garden set, and the way the two worlds are initially, jarringly divided by a partially raised safety curtain. For what it’s worth, comic Ranganathan acquits himself well: the bumbling, posh, repressed Bill is a million miles away from the comic’s sardonic stage persona – it’s a light turn, but it’s proper acting. And then there’s Smith, a wonderful and empathetic actor who effortlessly covers Susan’s considerable emotional terrain and the requirement to play hero, villain and victim all at once.
But but but… it’s like watching somebody on a fairground ride. Yes, Smith gives it heart and soul, but it’s mostly about seeing Susan engulfed by the lurid artifice and emotional corkscrews of Ayckbourn’s stage directions. Watching Smith switch between families and moods is impressive and even thrilling, but the longer it went on the less I understood what point Ayckbourn was trying to make beyond a technical exercise.
I think my biggest problem is that with her amusingly preposterous sister in law Muriel (Louise Brealey) and son Rick (Taylor Uttley) freshly escaped from a cult, Susan’s ‘real’ life is so overegged that it’s scarcely any less ludicrous than her imagined one. And while that may possibly be the idea (although I don’t think it actually is the idea) it’s difficult to see what the play is really saying about her. She’s a middle-aged woman who has been left behind by the real world and has instead embraced one conjured by her subconscious. But it never really takes the time to slow down and properly explore loneliness, middle aged sexuality, or even mental health. There is something melancholic and Chekhovian at its core, but it’s deep, deep beneath the surface, obscured by an all consuming conceptual glamour.
