Woman In Mind (Duke Of York’s Theatre, London)
Verdict: Courageous
FOUR STARS
Never miss an opportunity to catch Sheridan Smith live. If you loved her in Gavin and Stacey, or any of her many TV shows, you’ll surely adore her on stage.
And here she is again with a performance that’s joyfully effervescent, yet also dangerously intense and even disturbed.
Her role in Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 play (when Smith was just four) could have been written for her.
She stars as Susan, a middle-class housewife having a colourful but serious mental breakdown in an English country garden, alongside comedian Romesh Ranganathan.
Never miss an opportunity to catch Sheridan Smithlive. If you loved her in Gavin and Stacey, or any of her many TV shows, you’ll surely adore her on stage
Think of a middle-aged Alice having a bad but buzzy trip in Wonderland. She is torn between two families.
There is her fantasy family in which she’s married to a charming devil and has a vivacious daughter.
And there’s her dull reality, in which she’s married to a bookish vicar, and has an estranged son who won’t talk to her.
Ranganathan is a dowdy and bewildered GP, trying to help her navigate her mad worlds.
It’s a role that follows the less successful West End musical, Opening Night, in which Smith starred two years ago, about a famous actor having a nervous breakdown.
Again, Woman in Mind chimes with Smith’s own struggles with demons while performing in Funny Girl ten years ago.
We share her confusion about what’s real and what’s not, but the story is given clarity and driven by her emotional intensity, in a character who’s never off stage for over two hours.
Snippy and fidgety, she’s all wry smiles and inappropriate jokes, but sometimes she looks plain scared.
Catch her in the West End until February 28, before a week in March at the Sunderland Empire and then Glasgow Theatre Royal
Costumes and wooden tennis rackets are of its Eighties period, as much as the sitcom dialogue.
But its themes of mental collapse are timeless and compelling, illustrated by Michael Longhurst’s production featuring swirling, psychedelic projections beyond a clipped lawn, alongside squealing tinnitus between scenes.
This may not be how everyone likes to think of Smith, but it’s a tribute to her range and courage as an actor.
Catch her in the West End until February 28, before a week in March at the Sunderland Empire and then Glasgow Theatre Royal.
