John gave me quite a surprise yesterday. When he checked his calendar, he remembered that he had booked for us to go and watch Woman In Mind at the Juke of York’s theatre yesterday evening. I didn’t know anything about it – I hadn’t even heard of the play – but I’m always up for such things. When I googled it though, I saw that Ramesh Ranganathan was in it, who I still have quite large doubts about.

To be honest, what I found myself watching yesterday was very troubling indeed. A 1985 play by Alan Ayckbourn, Women in Mind purports to be a comedy, but frankly there is nothing comic about the subject it deals with. It depicts a woman with schizophrenia and her decent into severe mental illness: we see her interactions with various hallucinated characters as she becomes more and more troubled and uncomfortable. Frankly, knowing what I know about mental illness, I found nothing funny about it; but the fact that we were supposed to somehow find what we were watching humorous, as these hallucinations cavorted across the stage, left a very nasty taste in my mouth. It was as if the audience were being invited to laugh at the woman’s illness and clear, increasing discomfort, as if it was just all a big jolly game. I don’t know if I missed something, but as society in general becomes more aware of mental illness and it’s seriousness, I’m afraid to say I found it rather perverse.