Two-time Laurence Olivier Award-winning actress Janie Dee is to return to the London stage in 2009, when Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind transfers to the Vaudeville theatre.
The 1985 bittersweet comedy, which opens on 6 February, stars Dee as clergyman’s wife Susan, whose life is so dull and frustrating that she prefers to lose herself in an imagined reality. When the two worlds begin to overlap, however, danger threatens.
The lauded revival of Woman In Mind was originally staged by Ayckbourn earlier this year at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph theatre as part of his last season as the venue’s Artistic Director, a role he relinquishes in March 2009.
The production sees the prolific writer/director reunite with actress Dee, who scored a hat-trick of wins at the Laurence Olivier Awards, Evening Standard Awards and Critics’ Circle Awards when she last appeared in an Ayckbourn production, 1999’s Comic Potential, staged at the Lyric theatre. Dee’s other credits include Shadowlands, Carousel, My One And Only, Mack And Mabel, Betrayal and this summer’s Open Air theatre production of Twelfth Night.
Dee is joined in the cast by Bill Champion, Joanna David, Stuart Fox, Paul Kemp, Perdita Avery, Dominic Hecht and Martin Parr.
Woman In Mind follows another successful transfer, Piaf, at the Vaudeville. The biographical tale of French chanteuse Edith Piaf, which stars Elena Roger, was originally a sell-out hit at the Donmar Warehouse before transferring. It runs at the Vaudeville until 24 January.
MA