"From the moment the lights come up ... Ami Sallee Corley commands every viewer's undivided attention ... Woman in Mind is a smart, well-acted show full of energy. Who knew the descent into madness could be so exhilarating?" – Tampa Tribune

"There are several reasons why you should see Woman in Mind, but perhaps the best of them is actress Ami Sallee Corley's virtuoso performance ... everybody contributes to the laugh-out-loud comedy.... In fact, some of the scenes between Susan, Gerald and Muriel are as funny as anything I've seen on stage in months." – Creative Loafing

"Ami Sallee Corley, in the lead role of Susan, performs what I really believe is the most powerful theatrical role I've witnessed since moving to Florida." – Sticks of Fire

Woman in Mind

By Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by David M. Jenkins
Jun. 7 - 24, 2007
Thu. - Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Single tickets: $19.50 - $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, TBPAC

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 McDonald) 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.

Cast & Crew

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.