Sheridan Smith’s last West End outing was in Ivo van Hove’s flop ‘musical’ Opening Night – a charming, quirky show that didn’t deserve its meaner notices at all, but was proably also a bit ambitious for Theatreland. It's clearly not been too traumatic, as she reunites with its producers Wessex Grove for a Michael Longhurst-directed revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind.
First seen in 1985, it follow Susan, a woman who takes a knock to the head and starts to experience two version of reality – one actual reality, featuring her actual family, and the other fantastical and featuring an entirely imagined family.
The play came out when the hyperprolific Ayckbourn was at the zenith of his commercial popularity; he has been a relative stranger to the London stage in recent years, with his lumbering dystopia The Divide his only new effort to gain traction in the last decade and Woman in Mind bein his first major West End revival since 2012. Could Longhurst’s Sheridan Smith-powered revival be the show that powers a full on comeback? Time will tell.
