Woman in Mind
| Woman in Mind | |||
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| Written by | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Characters | Susan Gerald Muriel Rick Bill Andy Tony Lucy |
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| Date premiered | 30 May 1985 | ||
| Place premiered | Stephen Joseph Theatre (Westwood site), Scarborough | ||
| Original language | English | ||
| Subject | Madness, family neglect | ||
| Genre | Tragi-comedy | ||
| Setting | A real garden, and an imaginary estate | ||
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Woman in Mind (December Bee) is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End. The play received its London opening at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1986 where it received predominantly excellent reviews.
Woman in Mind was Ayckbourn's first play to use first-person narrative and a subjective viewpoint and is considered to be one of his most affecting works and one of his best.
Woman in Mind was the last play written by Ayckbourn before his two-year sabbatical at the Royal National Theatre. Most of it was written while Ayckbourn was on holiday in the Virgin Islands. Influences for the play include the film Dead on Arrival in which the narrator is revealed to be dead at the climax. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks is also said to be an influence. There were also similarities to Just Between Ourselves, which also followed a woman, Vera, breaking down with neglect. But unlike Just Between Ourselves, where the audience sees the breakdown from the point of view of those surrounding Vera, in this play, everything was shown from the point of the view of the increasingly deluded Susan.
Another theme was Susan's relationship to her son who joined a cult that forbids communication with parents, in what play critic Michael Billington considered to be an attack on organised religion. In his words, the play is "not only about an emotionally neglected middle-aged woman's descent into madness but also the failure of the orthodox Christian morality to cope with individual unhappiness."
Unlike most of Ayckbourn's earlier plays, which were often completed the day before rehearsals began, Woman in Mind was completed a week earlier than he expected. Ayckbourn himself was conscious that this play was radically different from his earlier plays in that the audience is expected to engage with a character whose perceptions are unreliable. His agent was sceptical as to whether an audience would accept such an unconventional play, and as the publicity went out before Ayckbourn had begun writing, an unusual brochure note was issued:
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