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Sheridan Smith is one of our biggest, best and most versatile actresses. She has awards coming out of her ears. She’s wowed the critics playing everyone from Cilla Black and Ronnie Biggs’ wife, to Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic — despite later admitting she’d never even heard of the playwright.

And on top of that she can sing and dance like a Hollywood superstar, even though she’s never been able to read music.

But as everyone who’s ever picked up a newspaper will know, her extraordinary success has been flanked by demons.

Plenty of them — battles with alcohol and anxiety and much of it played out in public, garnished with angry social media postings, drunken late-night rantings and the odd staggery tumble in the street.

Until things came to a head in early 2016, when she was starring in Funny Girl at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Sheridan, as Myrtle, staggers around outside the theatre every night

Sheridan, as Myrtle, staggers around outside the theatre every night

Sheridan was back in the West End last Wednesday night as she played Myrtle, a troubled Broadway actress on the brink of a mental breakdown in Opening Night

Sheridan was back in the West End last Wednesday night as she played Myrtle, a troubled Broadway actress on the brink of a mental breakdown in Opening Night

There were reports of missed curtain calls and slurred words. And then, on Thursday, April 28, the producer pulled the curtain down on his superstar, just 15 minutes into the show.

She has barely been on stage since, but last Wednesday night was back in the West End, playing Myrtle, a troubled Broadway actress on the brink of a mental breakdown (ring any bells?) in Opening Night, a brand new musical based on the John Cassavetes 1977 film.

She herself has declared: ‘If I can pull this off, then I’ll feel like, “Okay, I’m back.” ’

There has been much chat about it being the hottest ticket in town. Partly, because the music is written by Grammy-nominated Canadian-American composer and singer Rufus Wainwright.

And it hasn’t harmed the buzz that the director is Ivo van Hove, the maverick Belgian who recently brought us to three-and-a-half hours of James Norton, mostly butt-naked, in A Little Life.

But the real draw is Sheridan, 42, whose many fans love her deeply, without judgment. On the first night of the previews, they were five-deep in the street outside the Gielgud Theatre and later crammed into the stalls bar, fairly quivering with excitement, white wine and female camaraderie.

‘She’s been through so much! She’s a role model for women. All those hard times, and she’s pulled it all back,’ I’m told by an immaculately turned-out trio of retired physiotherapists down specially from Liverpool. ‘And all that talent!’

Miranda, a 63-year-old grandmother from Kidderminster, chips in. ‘I don’t know anything about the play but, after Cilla, I’d watch her in anything.’

Most of this crowd would walk over hot coals for Sheridan.

When I take my seat in the stalls, it turns out that both Vanessa, the lady in the next seat, and her husband, are also superfans.

‘I’ve always had a thing for her. We both have. She’s so brilliant. So tough. So brave,’ she says, before adding that, yes, she was there on that dark night in 2016 when the curtain crashed down mid-show.

‘So sad. So awful. But I’d seen her in it several times a couple of weeks before, and I knew she was drunk then, too.’

Little wonder Sheridan’s been teamed up with a health and wellbeing coach, on-hand backstage, for this production.

Opening Night, a brand new musical based on the John Cassavetes 1977 film, is being performed at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End

Opening Night, a brand new musical based on the John Cassavetes 1977 film, is being performed at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End 

There is something about Sheridan Smith that just grabs you, and makes you watch her, and just her, writes Jane Fryer

There is something about Sheridan Smith that just grabs you, and makes you watch her, and just her, writes Jane Fryer 

One of the scenes — filmed live every night and projected on the big screen inside — features Myrtle/Sheridan staggering drunkenly outside in the street. Tumbling over. Crawling across the busy road. Hauling herself up. Lurching about in ripped jeans and leopard-print coat before appearing on stage, half cut.

Apparently, it has really perked up business for restaurants and shops near the theatre as crowds gather each night to watch her stagger of shame.

As far as I can tell, the whole play is about human vulnerability, talent, ageing, a public unravelling, an obsession with acting, and staying relevant as a woman.

‘I live for the audience!’ cries Myrtle at one stage as, line after line, the parallels are slammed home by the script.

And yes, the same might once have been said for Sheridan who, along with her elder brothers, was performing from the age of six with her parents, Marilyn and Colin, a country and western duo. Later came a place at the National Youth Music Theatre, a starring role in a West End performance of Bugsy Malone and a move, aged 16, to London.

From there, her trajectory was straight up, with appearances in all our favourite sitcoms (The Royle Family, Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, Gavin & Stacey). It was on the latter she met James Corden, who played her on-screen brother, sparking a two-year, on-off relationship. 

The awards soon came. An Olivier for Legally Blonde. Another for Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path. A Bafta for her starring role in TV’s Mrs Biggs. So the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl just seemed par for the course.

In a recent interview, Sheridan traced the source of her unravelling back to 2011 and the last week of Legally Blonde when, after two years of performances, she forgot her lines.

No one cared, but the slip sent her spinning, and up bubbled self-doubt, anxiety and grief about her brother’s death from cancer, at just 18. There was no backstage therapist then.

As Sheridan puts it, it was just a case of ‘Get on stage!’

So she dealt with it her own way, with lashings of alcohol and late-night social media rants which led to trolling and vilification.

Then, in 2016, when her father was diagnosed with cancer and died a few months later, she couldn’t cope, and unravelled off stage and on, adding an obsession with tattoos to her issues, and still with zero support.

But even then, she didn’t disappear. She did more TV. She also fell in love with a handsome insurance broker called Jamie Horn, who she’d met on Tinder, and had a baby son, Billy, now three.

But she split up with Jamie and fell in love again last year with a boxer called Dave Ryan.

Most importantly, she’s done a lot of therapy, and (after drunkenly accusing Jamie’s mother of killing her dog) seems to have stepped away from the booze. An amazing achievement all round.

In many ways, this play is the final stage in her recovery.

Back in the Gielgud Theatre, after a lot of crying, a couple of sublime Wainwright songs, and quite a bit of shouting, it’s intermission time, the bar is rammed and, well, everyone seems nonplussed.

By the spindly plot, the unlikeable characters, the dysfunctional relationships, the odd mash-up of Wainwright’s music, Sheridan’s wonderful singing and acting and the angry, angsty script.

‘I think I’m enjoying it, but I’m a bit confused. I thought it was a musical, but there’s no dancing and not much joy,’ says Elaine, a graphic designer.

‘But my husband’s loving it. Maybe it’s just a bit Marmite…’

The second half is hardly a barrel of laughs, either.

Particularly an extended fight scene between Myrtle and the ghost of a 17-year-old fan. But the singing is lovely and the performances are superb.

It might not be the cheeriest production. (At the end, Vanessa next to me hisses angrily in my ear: ‘Sheridan is amazing, but I’ve seen better plays in my village hall!’).

And the two hours and 50 minutes don’t exactly fly by.

But as all these fans already know, there is something about Sheridan Smith that just grabs you, and makes you watch her, and just her. Whether she is sing- ing, shouting, crying or just lurching about like a drunken loon. So, yes, I’d say she’s back.

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This post first appeared on Daily mail

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