Woman in Mind
Vaudeville
On the Waterfront
Theatre Royal, Haymarket
The Stone; Seven Jewish Children
Royal Court
Blistering, searing, cracking, scorching. I’m describing the performances of Janie Dee and Stuart Fox in Woman in Mind, Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy about senile dementia. Smouldering, blazing, torrid, incandescent. There’s a few more. But a show can only take so much heat before it buckles and breaks. Janie Dee’s Susan is a frustrated upper-class sex-pot whose grip on reality is weakening and whose marriage to Gerald, a chortling musty vicar, has all but expired. Outstanding as the performances are they make the relationship seem pretty incredible. Janie Dee has too much sophistication, intelligence and Lumley-esque charisma to waste herself on this snuffling nerdy prelate, who buries his face in his local history chronicle rather than in the bosom of his alluring wife. The mismatch recurs in the verbal sparring between Susan and her sad skivvy of a sister-in-law whose Cubist approach to cooking culminates in a dish of Earl Grey omelettes — burnt, of course.
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