Sheridan Smith has returned to the London stage in a striking new production of Alan Ayckbourn's 1985 play Woman In Mind, which opened at the Duke of York's Theatre. The acclaimed actor takes on the role of Susan, a middle-class housewife experiencing a profound psychological crisis, in a run that began on Thursday 8 January 2026.
A Role Reflecting Recent Challenges
Smith's stage choices in recent years have often mirrored her personal experiences. In 2016, she withdrew from Funny Girl due to anxiety and burnout, an event that sparked intense media scrutiny. Her subsequent roles have explored themes of personal reckoning and mental strain, from Shirley Valentine to the challenging Opening Night, where she portrayed a singer undergoing a psychotic episode.
Now, in Woman In Mind, she again delves into the complexities of female mental health. Smith's Susan is a frustrated, lonely woman whose only child has joined a cult. After an accident with a garden rake, she begins to experience vivid, lucid hallucinations of an idealised, upper-class family life, starkly contrasting with her mundane reality with her dull vicar husband, Gerald (Tim McMullan).
A Stylish, Psychedelic Descent
The production is a visually stylish affair. The stage's safety curtain, painted with a floral scene, is bathed in lurid, technicolour projections when Susan enters her fantasy world, eventually taking on the psychedelic glow of an acid trip. These vibrant sequences are sharply contrasted with the grey, sombre depiction of her actual suburban garden.
Ayckbourn's script, revolutionary in the mid-80s for its focus on a woman's inner life, blends domestic comedy with deepening tragedy. The play is peppered with jokes, many at the expense of Gerald's sister's terrible cooking, which keep the tone relatively light in the first half. Smith excels in these cheeky, comic moments, delivering flirty innuendo with a shuffle of her hips and a knowing glance to the audience.
A Powerful Performance Amidst Uneasy Tension
However, it is in the play's harrowing final sequences that Smith truly shines. The blistering final ten minutes are a masterclass in conveying incremental psychological decline. Yet, a curious tension persists throughout the production. Smith, with her sleeve of tattoos and charismatic, coiled-spring energy, feels inherently mismatched with the stultifying world of the play, as if she is in a different production to her co-stars.
This disconnect raises intriguing questions: is Susan's radiance part of her psychosis, or is her golden glow simply unnoticed in her dreary life? The significant age gap between Smith (44) and McMullan (63) is never addressed, though a mention of menopause suggests Susan may be older than she appears.
The supporting cast includes Romesh Ranganathan as the timid Doctor Bill and Sule Rimi as the dashing fantasy husband Andy. Ultimately, this revival presents a very good performance in a very good play, though the central mismatch prevents it from fully becoming the sum of its parts. The production continues its run, offering a thought-provoking, if uneven, exploration of middle age and mental unravelling.
