Romesh Ranganathan syndicated interview Woman In Mind

A syndicated interview with Romesh Ranganathan who plays Bill alongside Sheridan Smith in Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind which comes to Sunderland Empire this 4 – 7 March as one of only two venues outside of the West End. The interview sums up what to expect in the play and also Romesh making his West End debut with the production.

You’re making your stage debut with this production! How have you found it, and have the company taken you under their wing?

I’ve done a fair bit of acting, but that’s all been for TV, so it’s a very different beast. Most of the TV acting I’ve done is for stuff that I’ve written, so it’s been a learning curve in terms of getting acquainted with material that I haven’t created, and then trying to find out what my version of the character that Alan Ayckbourn has written is, and then taking my character through their entire journey every single night and twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Preparing for that has been a new challenge!

I’m the least experienced member of the cast, I think, in terms of theatre acting, but the company has been great at helping me through, and obviously Michael Longhurst directing has been unbelievable. They’ve let me figure it out for myself and they’ve been there if I have questions. Even things like learning lines, I’ve never had to learn this quantity of lines before, because when you’re doing TV, you only learn what you’re going to film the next day and then they leave your brain forever. Whereas with this, you’ve got to know the whole thing! I know that sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it’s a challenge that I haven’t encountered before. 

How does performing Ayckbourn differ from making people laugh on your own terms?

When you do stand up you can do whatever the hell you want, as the audience doesn’t know what the joke is supposed to be. If you mess it up, you can make a joke of that or take it in a different direction. Whereas with a play, with Ayckbourn particularly, it’s so precisely written, and even if you did an appropriation of the line, you wouldn’t be doing what that line’s supposed to do. There’s a precision to it that you have to get to grips with.

You’ve built your career predominantly on playing yourself. Have you found it liberating or terrifying to have to play someone else?

I’ve talked to more experienced actors than me, and people that I really respect, and the advice they gave to me was to try and find whatever you’ve got in common with your character and kind of blow that up, if you like. I have tried to find that with Bill Windsor. Even though I’m not playing myself, there are elements of his nervousness and bumbliness that I do have. There was also a maths teacher I used to work with when I was a teacher, who reminds me of what Bill Windsor’s like. So, I’ve got him to thank really because sometimes, when I’m thinking, “what would Bill do?” I’m often thinking, “what would that guy do?” and channelling that really.

Did you find anything unexpectedly relatable within your character?

Yeah, I think that social, not ineptitude, but that kind of social awkwardness. I do have that. A lot of people don’t think that you’ll have that because you’re a stand-up comedian, but you are sort of playing a character when you’re a stand up. You’re playing a version of yourself that isn’t worried about what people think of them. Whereas when you’re off stage, you are incredibly worried, it’s all you think about, it is what keeps you up at 3am in the middle of the night! Somebody said to me the key is to find what is in your character that is also in yourself, but there are also certain things about him that aren’t the same. I’ve watched other people playing other characters to see if there is something that I can use as inspiration, so my Bill Windsor is really an amalgamation of myself and different kinds of influences. 

The play moves between Susan’s reality and fantasy, and between absurd comedy and real emotional pain. How do you strike the balance between the two? 

The comedy comes from playing the situation for real. Ayckbourn has set up these characters with dialogue that is just funny and it’s kind of everyday life mundanity. You don’t want to overegg it, so you play it truthfully and then the comedy, or the tragedy, will emerge naturally. The challenge is, in my inexperienced opinion, to find the truth as effectively as you can and then everything else will take care of itself. 

How do you help the audience – and yourselves – keep track of what’s real, or is that confusion part of the fun?

That’s been a lot of our discussion really, because before the script even starts, it says, “all of this is from Susan’s POV”, and so what that means is, even the situations that look like they’re a normal life, they could be imagined. You can’t really trust anything in a way, because everything can be imagined. For all we know, what we think is the imaginary family is actually the real family and vice versa, you just don’t know. My character, Bill Windsor, is probably the only one that kind of exists in both worlds – Susan’s link between the two.

I do think there should be a bit of confusion, but I think that you can play with that. Sometimes you don’t have to answer the question, you just have to put a question there and then the audience can come and decide for themselves.

Woman In Mind was first performed in 1985; how do you think the play speaks to audiences today? Has anything in it felt surprisingly contemporary?

The truth is that the mental health issues that Susan’s going through still resonate, arguably more so, because I think we’re now more aware of mental health issues and people’s struggles than we were when the play was first written. I also think that some of the gender politics will look different now than it would have done when the play first came out. I think there are certain things that maybe in the ‘ 80s, would not have raised much of an eyebrow as it does now. Some of the ways that Susan’s spoken to, some of the way she’s spoken over, all of those things, I think, will look starker now in the modern version.

Ayckbourn has a loyal following, but new generations might not know his work. What do you hope audiences take away from seeing this production?

Alan Ayckbourn is an incredible playwright. One of the reasons that I wanted to get into theatre was that I think there’s a lot of people who think theatre isn’t for them. We are doing our best to take a psychologically complex piece of Alan Ayckbourn’s work and present it to people, so that even if you’re not a regular theatre goer, or you’re not familiar with Alan Ayckbourn, there’ll still be something in it for you. 

Can you describe Woman In Mind in three words? 

Challenging, dark and funny.

Woman In Mind plays at Sunderland Empire Wed 4 – Sat 7 March 2026. Tickets are available here.