FREEWOMAN IN MIND EBOOK Alan Ayckbourn | 72 pages | 01 Nov 1987 | Samuel French Ltd | 9780573016622 | English | London, United Kingdom Woman in Mind - Variety THE true test of an artist, whatever the Woman in Mind form, is often to be found in the half-tones, not the primary colors. Stockard Channing, an actress whose indelible recent performances in ''The House of Blue Leaves'' and ''Joe Egg'' leave her with little need to prove anything, subjects herself to this rough test and triumphs in ''Woman in Mind,'' the modest but watchable Alan Ayckbourn Woman in Mind at the Manhattan Theater Club. As Susan, a middle-aged hausfrau of the Woman in Mind suburbs, Ms. Channing is in every way a smudged figure. Even her appearance blends into the scenery: minimal makeup, matronly print dress, sensible shoes, half-streaked and half-combed hair. But in Ms. Channing's muted spectrum of feelings - as often to be found in her distracted or bemused or anguished reactions to others as in her own mild lines and actions - there is ceaseless illumination of an ordinary woman's first, shell-shocking encounter Woman in Mind her own despair. When we initially meet Susan in her garden, she is regaining consciousness after knocking herself out by stepping on a rake. Woman in Mind the next Woman in Mind hours, she takes the audience into the stilled heart of her long marriage to a pompous vicar Remak Ramsaybut she does so from the point of view of a victim of a concussion or a nervous breakdown or both. Susan vacillates between madness and sanity, between fainting and waking, between pungent eloquence and verbal dysfunction, between erotic arousal and menopausal exhaustion. How Ms. Channing retains Woman in Mind fragile balance between such poles, never tilting to any one behavorial extreme until the devastating and yet still understated final curtain, is a mystery too haunting to be explained away by technique. Indeed, as was not the case with her London predecessor in the role, Woman in Mind McKenzie, the technique is invisible. When Susan experiences rage, Ms. Channing is less likely to raise her voice than dilate a single distressed eye. Grand gestures would be inappropriate. Susan isn't Hedda Gabler or Sylvia Plath. Her sorrows are banal - an adult son John David Cullum who has rejected her for a Moonie-like sect, a whiny and omnipresent sister-in-law Patricia Conollya husband who has subsumed his entire existence into the preparation of a dreary page history of his parish. It's the theatrical conceit of ''Woman in Mind'' that Susan retreats from this humdrum household not by contemplating revolt or suicide but by conjuring up a second, fantasy family - a devoted husband Daniel Gerrolldaughter Tracy Pollan and brother Michael Countryman. Dressed in tennis whites and forever sipping champagne, the imagined relatives are preposterous Noel Coward sophisticates who step into Susan's suburban garden much as the glamorous Jeff Daniels stepped out of the movie screen into Mia Farrow's drab life in Woody Allen's ''Purple Rose of Cairo. Like Mr. Allen, Mr. Ayckbourn soon reveals that his heroine's fantasy companions are no closer to perfection than the real-life characters they threaten to usurp. But ''Woman in Mind'' sets forth this point and others too schematically. The play doesn't run very deep in its view of Susan's psychology or her alternatives for liberation. The complex issues of marriage and family are ignored Woman in Mind tightly circumscribed as Mr. Ayckbourn asks his protagonist to choose between good and bad husbands and children rather than to question her own enslavement to the roles of wife and mother. The superficiality of Susan's predicament is compounded by Mr. Ramsay's and Ms. Woman in Mind buffoonish portrayals of Woman in Mind family she would leave behind: they're so grotesquely idiotic that one wonders how Susan ever tolerated them. Cullum's sullen, insolent son is far more persuasive, however - an ashen specter of parental neglect past - and Lynne Meadow's production is in general sharper than Mr. Ayckbourn's own West End staging of Gerroll, Ms. Pollan and Mr. Countryman bring the right sinister edge to Susan's dazzling second family. The set designer, John Lee Beatty, jazzes up the surreal denouement in which the author, in a typical upending of conventional dramatic form, shuffles reality and hallucination to vertigo-inducing effect. Though ''Woman in Mind'' isn't remotely as funny or chilling as its prolific author's more ambitious and Woman in Mind recent works ''A Chorus of Disapproval,'' ''A Small Family Business''one can see Ayckbourn at his best peeking through here and there. Of the supporting characters, the Woman in Mind fully realized by far is a family physician, superbly played by Simon Jones. A tweedy, awkward, congenitally apologetic sort, the doctor does little but tend to Susan's ailment with toothy smiles and innocuous chatter. Yet, without ever losing his jolly bedside manner or announcing an emotion, Mr. Woman in Mind delicately reveals the man as a lonely misfit with a bankrupt marriage of his own. In one of the playwright's characteristic coups de grace, the pathetic man's one attempt to reach out to Susan, by good-naturedly participating in her fantasy life, leads only to a cruel, farcical humiliation. Bottomless suffering and cruelty presented in the deceptively sunny guise of middle-class domestic farce - such is the substance of the bitter latter-day Ayckbourn deserving of much wider circulation in New York. Channing, on Woman in Mind virtually throughout, fills an evening with her diaphanous account of one woman's free fall through her own inner space. Presented by Manhattan Theater Club, Ms. Meadow, artistic director; Barry Grove, managing director. Stockard Channing Bill Simon Jones Andy Daniel Gerroll Lucy Tracy Polan Tony Michael Countryman Gerald Remak Ramsay Muriel Patricia Conolly Rick John David Cullum. Theater The Stage: 'Woman in Mind'. View on timesmachine. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived Woman in Mind. Home Page World U. Review: Woman in Mind | Varsity What usually follows is a comedy about suburban values and middle-class pretensions, in which the whole charade goes up in flames. When we first meet Susan Bethan Woman in Mind she is flat out on the grass of her garden, beside the offending rake, which has knocked her unconscious. Alas, this family turns out to be nothing but a fantasy, and her real family consist of a passionless buffoon of a husband, played with wonderful self- importance by Benedict Flett, a pathetic and patronising sister-in-law Louisa Keight and a prudish son Joe Pieriwho has joined a philosophical cult and has ceased talking to her. As the play progresses, the real and imaginary families become mixed up, and the latter starts to take on a life of its own. Even her imaginary family come to disappoint her, apparently failing to meet the achievements of those in her real world, and reminding her of her own lack of Woman in Mind. The thin veneer of cosy family rituals wears thin and eventually Woman in Mind away completely, leaving exposed an unsettling and hysterical vision of mental torment and bitter disappointment with life. All the cast inject their ridiculous one-dimensional characters with enough hilarity to be bearable, but they are all ultimately pillars to support Susan. This is a one-woman show, and Davidson delivers a performance that Woman in Mind savagery and charm. Her marriage is miserable, and her own doctor would rather talk to her husband about Woman in Mind condition than her, but she allows you to constantly catch sights of the woman Susan used to be: witty, sensual and cutting. Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges. We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding, and during this unprecedented global crisis, we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead. In spite of this situation, we are going Woman in Mind look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content and of course in print too. Many thanks, all of us here at Varsity would like to wish you, your friends, families and all of your loved ones a safe Woman in Mind healthy few months ahead. Support Varsity. AmoMama Utility Saving Expert. Review of Woman in Mind at the Vaudeville Alan Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind trilogy "The Norman Conquests" is his undoubted masterpiece, but his comedy-drama, "Woman in Mind," runs a close second. By David Benedict. Sadly, with its first West End revival, the chances of lightning striking twice are slim. Audiences are instantly catapulted into the point-of-view of leading character Susan Janie Deediscovered lying on the lawn having knocked herself out by Woman in Mind on her garden rake. A fussy local doctor Paul Kemp ministers over her, initially speaking garbled nonsense representing what Susan hears in her confused state. Within minutes, however, her high-spirited, champagne-quaffing brother Tony Martin Parrideal husband Andy Bill Champion and perfect daughter Lucy Perdita Avery all bounce on to cheer her up. Except that, as swiftly becomes clear, they are Woman in Mind fantasy.