Laura Wade’s play was judged best new comedy at the 2019 Olivier Awards. Now the People’s Theatre, doing what it does often and well, gives us the chance to judge a new play for ourselves.
Many of us get accused of living in the past. What else can we do since the present becomes it in the blink of an eye?
But married couple Judy and Johnny really are trying to live in the past, and the bit of it they have chosen is the 1950s.
It has meant sacrificing certain conveniences, such as a fridge that isn’t clinging to life, but it’s comfortable compared with earlier decades and at least not blighted by civil war or bubonic plague.
And it does mean they can live amid jolly period wallpaper and drink tea from quaint cups and saucers.
A fabulous set exposes nearly every room in this time capsule of a house and for many it’ll be a nostalgia trip. I spotted my grandmother’s carpet sweeper and her kitchen cupboard from a time before such things were ‘fitted’.
But nostalgia, we’ll be reminded, can be “an affliction”.
It falls to accomplished People’s stalwarts Kay Edmundson and Sam Burrell to summon up an idealised retro version of domestic bliss, she in a billowing ’50s frock and he with his trilby and braces.
Johnny might seem like the cat that got the cream, returning from work – “Darling, I’m home” - to a solicitous stay-at-home wife who will soon have supper served.
And Judy’s welcoming smile doesn’t seem forced, despite a day of sweeping, washing and polishing stuff that’s already clean.
Well, not at first, although it doesn’t take long before cracks appear. Locking yourself in a decade long gone, it turns out, doesn’t render you immune to modern pressures.
Suspicions and insecurities mount, stoked by close friends Fran and Marcus (Steph Moore and Sam Hinton), by Judy’s mum Sylvia (Jo McEvedy) and by estate agent Johnny’s new boss, the frightfully modern and efficient Alex (Sara Jo Harrison) who proves immune to the charms of deviled eggs on a period sofa.
The opening scene of act two flashes back to give us some sense of why – and how - Judy and Johnny are doing this.
And there follows a fairly scattergun exploration of the realities of a 1950s lifestyle when office politics, and pretty much everything else, favoured the male of the species.
When Marcus is banished from his office after a secretary complains of inappropriate behaviour, it’s an opportunity to contrast what men could get away with then with what’s acceptable now.
Then there’s the fact that a housewife’s duties, although never done, were never considered work (“because men don’t do it,” one character retorts).
Even one-time arch feminist Sylvia, who actually lived through the ‘50s, subjects her daughter to that rapier thrust while deriding her life choice as something of a betrayal.
When Johnny finally lets the mask slip and wonders accusingly what his wife does all day… well!
Eileen Davidson’s enjoyable production is blessed with some nifty movement (Kaila Moyers and Jonathan Goodman get the choreography credit) which is pretty well executed by her cast.
While not a comedy of the side-splitting variety, it’s blessed with good performances, smart lines and lashings of food for thought. And it looks good, too, with that impressively constructed set.
Home, I’m Darling runs until Saturday, October 4 with performances at 7.30pm. Tickets from the People’s Theatre website.
During the interval there’s a chance to peruse a new foyer exhibition of recent work by members of the North of England Art Club.