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UPDATE: in a surprising new piece of casting, superstar comic Romesh Ranganathan has been added to the cast – he’ll make his stage debut to play Bill, husband to Sheridan Smith’s character Susan. Although he’s never acted in a theatre, he has acted, having starred in the sitcoms Avoidance and Romantic Getaway, plus a voice role in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
Last time Sheridan Smith was in the West End it was with Ivo van Hove’s Opening Night, a leftfield art musical that in no way deserved the sneering notices it got in the more backwards quarters of the press, but at the same time was clearly much too weird for a mass Theatreland audience.
But Smith’ll bounce back this Christmas, rejoining forces with Opening Night producers Wessex Grove as she plots her West End return.
That said, an Alan Ayckbourn okay definitely sounds like a safer commercial bet than a formally challenging Euro-musical: she’ll star in a revival of the veteran British dramatist’s hit 1985 play Woman in Mind, directed by ex-Donmar boss Michael Longhurst.
As with much of Ayckbourn’s work, this one comes with a conceit. It concerns Susan (Smith), a woman who takes a bump to the head and starts to experience two versions of reality: one real, one imagined.
It’s certainly an interesting play to revive: Ayckbourn was at his commercial zenith when it premiered but it’s been an age since he was last in the West End. It’s not entirely risk free. Then again, it sounds very much up the street of the ever winsome Smith, and a meaty role to get her teeth into to boot. Expect her to be back to her hit-making ways.
Woman in Mind is at the Duke of York’s Theatre, Dec 9-Feb 28 2026.
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