Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Woman in Mind’ is a painful comedy about the breakdown of a middle-class housewife, Susan, presented from her perspective. Two families cohabit in Susan’s mind: her real family (her dreary Reverend of a husband, insipid sister-in-law and son who’s disappeared after joining a cult) and her imagined family (the ‘perfect’ husband, doting brother and admiring daughter.) Gerald, the real husband, is apathetic, unsupportive and unsympathetic. His sister is a pain. Meanwhile, the GP is trying to flirt with Susan. As Susan gets worse, the two worlds begin to blur: the imagined family becomes nightmarish, no longer under her control.
Text from Camdram.
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‘I don’t know what my role is these days. I don’t know any longer what I’m supposed to be doing. I used to be a wife. I used to be a mother. And I loved it. People said, Oh, don;t you long to get out and do a proper job? And I’d say, No thanks, this is a proper job, thank you. Mind your own business. But not it isn’t anymore. The thrill has gone’
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You bullied him into that scholarship and then packed him off to that piddling little public school where he never saw anything female aged under fifty-five or weighing less than fifteen stone till the day he left…
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We’re just all so proud of you, Mummy, you’ve no idea. I know you won’t read these things, but did you know that last Sunday in the Observer, they called you probably our most important living historical novelist…
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There are all sorts of games we can play, you see. With our minds.
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Absolutely, positive. Listen, I’ve seen countless people going off their heads on several occasions and they were nothing like you… You’re perfectly fine. Probably a bit run down, that’s all.
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I’m free of you all now, you see. All of you. You with your prim little, frigid little, narrow-minded little meanness. And that priggish brat who’s ashamed of me. Who’d faint at the sight of a pair of tits.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to propose a toast to the woman who is not simply the most important person in my life – but I suspect, is the most important person in all our lives…
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Reviews: Varsity (4.5/5), The Tab (5/5)
For more theatre photos see the theatre category on the blog.
Cast
Susan – Bethan Davidson
Bill – Helen Vella Taylor
Andy – Xanthe Burdett
Lucy – Hollie Witton
Gerald – Benedict Flett
Rick – Joe Pieri
Tony – Carine Valarche
Muriel – Louisa Keight
Production Team
Director – Eva O’Flynn
Assistant Director – Alice Attlee, Elinor Lipman
Producer – Louisa Keight
Associate Producer – Katurah Morrish
Photographer – Johannes Hjorth
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