Play Produced Woman In

Mind by Alml Ayckbourn

Smilh discusses his production ' -r The Phoenix Thealre Company

al lire Millfield Thealre, Edmonlorr

Wmlarr in Milld is one of Alan Ayckbourn's "blacker" comedies, dealing, as it does, with a woman gradually losing her mind. We see the play entirely through Susan's eyes, so that at times the viewpoint is subjective. The only way Susan can deal with her boring hus­band, appalling sister-in-law and priggish son is to invent a "dream family" in a beautiful garden which exists beyond her own garden where the action takes place. The play opens with Susan unconscious on the

Wed 15 . Sal 16 Nov at epm

Phoenix Theatre Company

WOMAN IN MIND

by Alan Ayckbournc

NORTH LONDON S NEW THEATRE

ground after knocking herself out with a garden rake. First her "dream family" appear, all sweet­ness and light, but when her real relatives come on the scene Susan escapes by fainting once more. Gradually, during the course of the play, her imaginary family intrude more and more into her real life until, in a Lewis Carroll style nightmare ending the real and imaginary worlds become hopelessly confused and we are left with an image of Susan, speaking unintelligible words and lit only by the blue flashing light of an ambulance.

CASTING Casting the play initially was no problem with all of the roles being filled by early July to

me ce rehearsals in Sept em­ere able to cast the

looks from

present members with "guests" culled from interested friends. However, by the first rehearsal the actor playing Gerald had to bow out for work commitments and the next few days were spent busily ringing round for a replacement. Fully cast again we were off. Three weeks later this replacement actor dropped out "for personal reasons". Luckily we were able to secure the services of a good actor who happily took on the part, despite a twenty-mile round trip for each rehearsal! These upheavals meant we were only able to rehearse with any cohesion six weeks from the first per­formance.

We are unable to rehearse in our final performing space, being limited to a room about 20 feet square. Further problems were added by the fact we were about to make a leap from a 50-seater "studio" space to the brand new 366-seater Millfield Theatre in North London, with a pros. opening of some 33 feet but stage depth of about 20 feetl

SET DESIGN I attempted to confine the "real" world to an area six feet wide in rehearsal. This worked for a short time but without the edge of the stage to fall off actors would always cheat and use the two odd feet before the wall for extra movement! The "real" area finally had to be 7 12 feet wide when all the stage dressing was completed . Owing to the nature of the play being outside and being con stained by a lack of space, various points in the play are rather static. This is in the

plotting of the play and unless you want actors along the nar­row strip to become a set of bowls the solution becomes obvious. Having seen the West End production, directed by the author, it becomes obvious that the "real" world is a linear play

and although we tried to over­come this by careful positioning (no straight lines!) the view from the front would always give this

the "real" house. [ settled for th West End solution and had them fairly wide, for example, in the lunch scene at the end of Act l. This led to us being criticised (the play was adjudicated at one performance as part of Enfield'> Full Length Play Festival) fo~ leaving a "no-man's land" in the middle of the stage. However, have found that an audience i, quite content to look and listen and as long as there is enoug movement and interest to sustain them they are quite happy. This is compounded by the play itself. Susan spends a lo~ of time centre stage (in "no­man's land") lying or sitting down; two scenes are taken up by those on stage sitting in chairs placed right with several stage directions for Susan yo­yoing along the strip. This is not an easy play to direct or rehearse, especiall y gi ven our casting and space transference problems.

appearance anyway. Also the other major point to consider in rehearsing is how close to bring the "dream" family in towards

SCENERY The scenery was slightly less problematical. We took a field trip to the nearest production of the play we could find (in the Midlands) in the hope of culling ideas or even hiring odd bits of scenery. However this produc­tion was so out of keeping with the one I envisaged it was really a lesson in what I did NOT want to do! Back to the drawing board. Fortunately we are able to call on the services of a superb scenic artist and I briefed him to draw a maze 18 feet long by 10 feet high on flats. Sustained by many cups of coffee (and the odd pint) he accomplished this in three weekends along with a surreal sundial and patio steps. The maze was to be our fixed cyclorama, a backdrop for the dream world. In front, as

Amatell r Stage jlm/f{/ r!' 1990

dressing, was a combination of company built "dream trees", made out of grey gauze, and hired white statue, white pillars and borrowed white bench. We

the dream world. We accom­plished the suspense of the dream world by drawing black tabs behind the gauzes until the first appearance of Andy. There-

were unable to have a high swing (as used up West) as the theatre has no flying space and only a moveable grid (useful on other occasions but not for swings!). To delineate between the real and dream worlds we purchased two black sharks tooth gauzes, made to fit the theatre but not, I hasten to add, for use for this produdion only! The real world was no trouble at all. Hiring 6'x3' grass mats gave us a lawn with lots of real stage dressing, i.e. conifers, shrubs, rain barreL fencing, wallflowers etc. We decided on no colour (except greens) as real flowers are unlucky on stage anyway, and difficult to get the variety we would have needed at our production Ume - November. To put artificial flowers with the real greenery would have looked wrong, we feel.

LIGHTING The lighting posed no real prob­lems, except where we got a "bleed" through the gauze into

after we left these open as they were slightly noisy to constantly

hospital spell and this was also a means of disposing of the table ts she is given in Act II. Bill wore a professional suit initially with a change to navy blazer and grey trousers, and finally to a glorious check jacket, black shirt, yellow bow tie and hat for the Act II finale. Gerald began with the standard vicar's collar and his finale Archbishop'S outfit was made by Wardrobe from red watered silk curtaining to save on hiring fees. He also carried a garden hoe in place of the usual bishop'S crook l Muriel raided her mother's wardrobe and jumble sales for her outfits. Rick wore his own clothes apart from another group's Wishee-Washee costume and coolie hat found in an aHic sale for the finale. The dream family - Andy, Tony and Lucy were dressed all in white but gradually added colour - Tony with his plus fours shooting outfit and Andy at the wedding (we had to hire the grey morning suit!). Lucy's wedding dress was loaned and

she already possessed animal ears from another production.

agreed to have their hair sprayed each night with Kyrolan "blonde" spray, and gorgeously blonde they looked too (Lucy was naturally blonde).

SOUND We took the decision to have no music or effects to open the play as we felt whatever we chose could mislead the audience or trivialise the subject matter. For sound we used BBe Effects records and the local library. For ease of cperation we went for two revox machines to overlay the "constant" sounds, i.e. rain and band with the other effects - thunder etc.

Most props were easy to come by - mugs, glasses, trays etc. Those that had to be made included the macrame dress ­but remember Susan believes it to be made of knotted string, as this is how Bill alludes to it, so it should not be real macrame. The salmon was made out of Polly­fina in a fish mould and dressed with rice, piped potato, mayon­naise and garnish. (Incidentally, we sewed all the items of cutlery, crockery and napery to the tablecloth to ease Tony's handling of the table). The gun was hired from Bapty's.

Woman In Mind is, in my opinion, what one can truly describe as a director's play. Giving you the widest scope to use imagination and creativity to the fullest extent. This is combined with having to call on the extremes of emotion, and of black comedy meaning the end result should be vastly enter­taining, visually exciting and an

open and close. We were able to produce a particularly effedive sunset by the use of orange and red gel in the theatre's colour wheels. These latter were used throughout the produdion to add colour where required. We decided to keep the dream world in open white as that world was in shades of black, white and grey. We felt any colour would have caused an imbalance in the design. The sunsets and ending of course pick up this area making the finale an exciting visual montage of colour and costume.

COSTUME AND PROPS In common with several Ayck­bourn plays, Woman In Mind is not easy or cheap to costume. Susan is probably the easiest. She cannot change and some­thing light with a belt for loosening is all that is required. We added a pocketed cardigan for a change of colour after her

Our Tony and Andy were both brown-haired, so to give the "Hollywood" look they both

immensely rewarding experi­ence. It was. For us and our audience. 0

PAGE '15Amateur Stage january 1990