Dog Sees God
Woman in Mind
By Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by David M. Jenkins
Jun. 7 – 24, 2007
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Tickets: $19.50 – $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Winner!
- Creative Loafing 2007 Top 10 Plays
- Creative Loafing Best of the Bay – Best Actress – Ami Sallee Corley
- Creative Loafing Best of the Bay – Best Costume Designer – Katrina Stevenson
- Jobsite Jobby – Best Actress – Ami Sallee Corley
- Jobsite Jobby – Best Supporting Actress – Kari Goetz
Sir Alan Ayckbourn (Norman Conquests, Absurd Person Singular, Absent Friends), one of the most popular and prolific playwrights in the world, goes deeper and darker in this play about a bored housewife named Susan who is married to a stodgy vicar.
After regaining consciousness from a comical accident, Susan experiences a series of hallucinations in which her tedious, loveless and oppressive everyday life is replaced by a fantasy world where she is the ideal wife and mother of an ideal family. The two halves of her life eventually collide with hilarity and heartbreak.
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"We laugh ourselves though [the] characters and the experience is at once painful and exhilarating." – Sunday Express , London
Woman in Mind opens in a traditional English garden where Susan (Ami Sallee Corley) wakes up after she stepped on the tooth end of a garden rake and knocked herself out. She is tended to by the bumbling-yet-sweet local GP Bill Windsor (Shawn Paonessa ) whose words slowly turn from complete gibberish to clear English as she regains consciousness and her composure.
The opening scene, like the play that follows it, is both wonderfully comic and deeply unsettling. Following her initial recovery, Susan lapses and begins to hallucinate. Her real world – inhabited by nebbish husband (Jason Evans), eccentric sister-in-law (Kari Goetz) and distant son (Stephen Ray ) – is replaced with a world populated by a loving husband (Steve Garland), perfect daughter (Caitlin Eason) and dapper brother (Matt Lunsford).
Her simple English garden morphs into a vast estate, where poorly-made coffee is replaced with flutes of Dom Perignon. In all aspects of the production the boundary between the real and the ideal world is blurred and broken until the entire experience is simultaneously surreal and harrowing.
About the Artists
Woman in Mind is directed by Jobsite producing artistic director David M. Jenkins (The Pillowman, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune) with scenic design by Brian Smallheer, lighting by John Lott and costumes by Creative Loafing Best of the Bay Award winning designer Katrina Stevenson. See more about the cast and crew.
