LA Review: 'Woman in Mind (December Bee)'

Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 black comedy begins with the character of Susan listening to someone speaking gibberish and ends with her babbling gibberish. In between, we witness what could be termed as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In one of two parallel worlds, Susan is blissfully happy, with a husband, a brother, and a daughter who are a dream; in the other, she’s miserable, with a different husband, his sister, and a son, none of whom are the ideal. At first we believe we’re seeing two different existences—but it soon becomes clear that misery is Susan’s reality, and happiness is a fiction her mind has created as an escape from that reality. The play’s subtitle, “December Bee,” is derived from the question “Remember me?” spoken in the garbled nonsense language Susan hears whenever her mind strays too far from reality. At that time a departure for Ayckbourn, “Woman in Mind” is an honest look at a seriously dysfunctional family—and at the limited choices of a person trapped in such a clan: Accept your bleak existence, or imagine something better. Christian Lebano’s staging benefits from the assured acting of his well-chosen cast and a style that complements the absurdist, surrealistic nature of the text.

The life Susan (Sharon Sharth) retreats to is almost too idyllic to be true, which is obviously Ayckbourn’s point and his way of signaling that the characters are products of her unhinged mind. (As one character tells her, “There are all sorts of games we can play with our minds.”) Daughter Lucy (Victoria Mayers) especially lays it on thick, worshiping at Susan’s feet while extolling her virtues as well as her fame as a historical novelist. Husband Andy (Rees Pugh) and younger brother Tony (Angus McEwan) are also almost impossibly free of defects. By contrast, Susan’s marriage to Gerald (David Hadinger), the vicar of their small country town, is loveless and sexless. Gerald’s frumpy widowed sister Muriel (Anne Etue) irritates Susan to no end, while the couple are estranged from their only child, son Rick (Nathan Hertz). Lebano and company don’t force the play’s issues or themes, instead allowing the story to unfold and breathe at its own pace. The result is humorous only in the broadest sense, as Ayckbourn is only interested in exploring the nooks and crannies of a mind ironically set free to roam by stress and unhappiness.

Sharth’s Susan is both wide-eyed and perceptive, often laughing to herself at Gerald and Muriel when not unleashing her acerbic sarcasm on them. Sharth also paints a middle-aged woman who is sensitive and vulnerable. We see her near-panic over trying to control or erase her visions as they begin to intrude on reality, as well as her self-loathing in a diatribe she delivers against Gerald, Rick, and Muriel. Hadinger, Etue, and Hertz corroborate the family fractiousness that has made Susan’s life unbearable. With his booming voice, the tall, bald-pated Hadinger is a robust, imposing, and fairly clueless Gerald. Etue is suitably dowdy and myopic as the thick-witted Muriel, easily the world’s worst cook. Though a more sympathetic figure, Hertz’s Rick is sullen and detached. Dan Wingard shows that Dr. Bill Windsor, the one character who appears in both of Susan’s worlds, is only marginally less of a dolt than Gerald. Jittery, confused, and easily flummoxed, he waffles over every topic so as not to upset or offend anyone. Pugh’s Andy is ever the too-perfect spouse. Mayers’ Lucy is playful, alluring, and carefree, and McEwan’s Tony is both overly doting and prone to mischief if not outright violence.

The cast handily captures the uneasy nature of the climactic scene in which all of Susan’s earlier hallucinations bleed together, its imagery and incongruous elements creating a nightmarish tone. Deborah Ross-Sullivan’s dialect work has equipped the cast well. Liz Nankin’s costumes suggest at once the characters’ social status (upper middle class), the setting (small-town England), and the era (the mid-1980s). By dressing Andy, Lucy, and Tony primarily in white and lighter colors, she foretells our suspicion that the trio are not for real. Matthew G. Hill’s set has all you’d expect in a suburban English garden. Sammy Ross’ lighting design ingeniously reflects the mood and tone of each scene, including a vivid sunset that’s realistic and poetical, and Barry Schwam’s sound scheme complements the work of the other design team members.

Presented by and at Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre. May 25–July 7. Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m. (626) 355-4318 or sierramadreplayhouse.org.