Susan is not the first woman battling inner demons in her middle years that Sheridan Smith has taken on for the West End stage. Before Alan Ayckbourn’s disconsolate housewife here, there was her superlative Shirley Valentine, navigating middle-age wobbles by setting sail for the island of her dreams, and John Cassavetes’ Myrtle, in Opening Night, more brittle and inebriated in her midlife malaise.
Susan is, like Shirley and Myrtle, in a mentally fragile state. That is partly because she has taken a knock to the head with a garden rake, which has triggered an alternate, hallucinatory world. This, at first, seems like a refuge from the emotionally deadened real life she shares with vicar-husband, Gerald (Tim McMullan), dour sister-in-law, Muriel (Louise Brealey), and rebel son, Rick (Taylor Uttley) who has refused to speak to his parents since joining a sect in Hemel Hempstead.
Although this play premiered in 1985, Susan is in many ways the straitjacketed 1950s housewife, albeit drawn in a darkly comic vein. Smith plays the part with whimsical daintiness and subtlety, throwing out mischievous or slighted looks. You feel her vulnerability, especially in the first act, but the emotional connection lessens as the drama becomes more high-pitched and surreal. Smith remains understated, which is perhaps judicious as the tone edges into melodrama and supernatural farce.
Susan’s imaginary world features a picture perfect family, from a sexually hungry husband, Andy (Sule Rimi), to adoring daughter, Lucy (Safia Oakley-Green) and brother, Tony (Chris Jenks). Or so it seems at the outset. Under the direction of Michael Longhurst, they have something of Oz about them, with a too garish colour scheme to their clothes (glaring pinks, purples and yellows) and a distantly anxious soundtrack (designed by Paul Arditti). Meanwhile, Romesh Ranganathan, as nervy doctor Bill is unusual casting but brings the comedy of this nerdy sidekick to life.
The tone varies from that of a retro comedy – Bill is dressed in 1970s browns and mustards while Muriel wears a housecoat reminiscent of the same era – to surreal nightmare. The vacillations create a kind of inconsistency that might be deliberate. The herb garden, in which Susan originally faints, opens up to a hyper-real buccolia, designed by Soutra Gilmour, and colours bleed against a wavering backdrop (video design by Andrzej Goulding) as reality and fantasy converges.
Susan is not the only one stuck in a world of make-believe: Muriel thinks her dead husband visits her, Rick’s sect has evidently taken control of his reality while Gerald is living his own writerly fantasy as he works on a 60-page pamphlet about the history of his parish.
Revived in its 40th anniversary year, the play stands the test of time for its originality and boldness: this is a critique of the emptiness of married life and the desperation that a woman feels inside it that takes us from the domestic drudge to high-wire supernaturalism. When it works, it is unnerving. The imaginary family is creepy for its wooden perfection and performative warmth. You feel the chill building as they turn into nightmarish tormentors.
It is a play worth reviving too at a time when the real world looks so bleak. What is the alternative to facing up to it? Seeking recourse in fantasy, only to find that this is not a panacea but another version of the same nightmare of real life?
At Duke of York’s theatre, London, until 28 February. Then at Sunderland Empire, 4-7 March, and Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 10-14 March.
