Review of Romesh Ranganathan's West End debut

Romesh Ranganathan is unlikely to win awards for the boundless versatility of his acting, but he’s well-cast in his West End debut as a socially awkward, repressed doctor in this revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s slippery portrait of a woman losing her grip on reality.

He’s there from the start, tending to poor Susan (Sheridan Smith) who’s suffered a blow to the head and trying to decipher the gobbledegook the doctor seems to be spouting. Eventually her head clears enough to be semi-present in the world, yet still suffers problems distinguishing reality from hallucination.

Her psychosis seems triggered by the loss of identity and a misery that in middle-age her lot has not turned out how she hoped. With her marriage to a dull vicar Gerald (Tim McMullan)  languishing in sexless utility and her  son now flown the nest, her unappreciated labours as a housewife now seem like a life wasted. But what seems like an escape eventually becomes a trap.

The story runs on two tracks. The fantasy of a mannered life of tea and champagne on a country-house lawn feels like a Merchant-Ivory period piece in contrast with the more mundane reality – at first a kitchen sink drama, then  a furious farce as the couple’s estranged son returns with his bombshells. As directed by Michael Longhurst, the hilarious comic mania and the very real mania the mentally fragile Susan suffers segue easily between each other.

Ranganathan gets to show off his comic chops in awkward conversation with Susan, and his physical comedy, fluid and well-timed as he grapples with his briefcase, stumbles over a concrete frog or gets flustered by romantic attention. More laughs come from Louise Brealey as Gerald’s impossible dour sister – and terrible cook – Muriel

But it is Smith’s show through and  through, and she mesmerises for every minute she is on stage – which is all of them – as she oscillates between confusion, frustration, bliss, anger and many stops in between.

The safety curtain becomes symbolic, a protection between the dull reality one side and the fantasy the other that becomes increasingly porous.  A glitching projected backdrop indicates all is not smooth before it all falls apart.

Forty years on from its original production, and retaining the milieu of 1985, Woman In Mind feels like a slightly stylised look at mental collapse rather than driven by first-hand experience, but  remains a compelling and often very funny tragicomedy which retains its ability to intrigue, especially with Smith’s powerful performance.

Review date: 8 Jan 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett