Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Five stars
When worlds collide it changes everything for Susan, the woman on the verge of what used to be called a nervous breakdown in Alan Ayckbourn’s mid 1980s play. The bump on the head she wakes up from at the start of the play after she stepped on a rake in an unseen piece of comedy slapstick has clearly been an accident waiting to happen for some time.
Vicar’s wife Susan is trapped in a loveless marriage with Gerald, who is more concerned with trying to write a history of his parish than he is for his wife. Their would-be rebel son Rick has just left a sect in Hemel Hempstead for a brand new wife, and Gerald’s sister Muriel thinks her long dead husband is talking to her.
Delirium sends Susan down one of Dr. Bill’s rabbit holes, where a parallel universe steps out of the bushes in the shape of a fantasy family. All drop dead gorgeous, they idolise Susan, who has reimagined herself as a best selling historical novelist.
For a moment in Michael Longhurst’s vivid production that has already had a West End run, it looks like dreams really can come true, for Susan if nobody else. The grim reality, alas, is that she is falling apart, an invisible woman who has lost any sense of herself to the extent that she only comes truly alive while in her other world.
This is brought to tragicomic life by a mercurial Sheridan Smith as Susan, who navigates a restless turbo charged path that leaves her emotionally exposed in a way you fear might see her break into tiny pieces any second.
Support in the real world comes from Louise Brealey as a brilliantly brittle Muriel, and Romesh Ranganathan as a bumbling Bill alongside Tim McMullan’s equally desperate Gerald and Taylor Uttley as Rick. The allure of the dream home beyond, however, looks like salvation for Susan. This is occupied by Sule Rimi as Susan’s fantasy husband Andy, with Safia Oakley-Green and Chris Jenks as their similarly attractive offspring, who appear from the undergrowth of Soutra Gilmour’s increasingly trippy set.
If written today, Susan would have all manner of diagnoses thrust upon her by Bill. As it is, all he can offer here is a pathetically unconsummated breach of professional ethics. Forty years on from when the play’s appearance redefined perceptions of Ayckbourn from a chronicler of middle class farce to a writer exploring something far more troubling in terms of the human condition, its influence on offbeat contemporary comedy drama is obvious. As demonstrated here in kooky fashion, Ayckbourn’s play remains a devastating dissection of a woman in crisis.
The Herald, March 12th 2026
ends
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