Review: HOME, I'M DARLING at ARTS Theatre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 17th August 2023.

Therry is presenting Laura Wade’s satirical play about a couple living as though it was still the 1950s, Home, I’m Darling, under the direction of Jude Hines. Nostalgia, we discover, is not what it used to be.

Around the world, there are some people who really do attempt to live in a past era, in a little sphere of their own within the present, decorating their houses, filling their wardrobes, styling their hair, and cooking their meals in keeping with their chosen period. In this play, an English couple, Jonny and Judy Martin, live as though it is the 1950s, but it’s 2018. Their friends, Fran and Marcus, share a love of the period, but are not quite as dedicated, and need to hang on to a degree of modernity. Sylvia, Judy’s mother grew up in the 1950s, and later lived in a hippy commune, where Judy was raised. Alex, Jonny’s new boss, is as up-to-date as you can get. They all have an impact on the couple and their chosen lifestyle.

At the start, we see what appears to be a couple living an idyllic life together in a self-devised alternate reality, in a semidetached house in Welwyn Garden City. He goes out to work each day, and she stays at home, trying to be a perfect 1950s housewife. He comes home each day to find the house cleaned, dinner cooked, and his slippers and a cocktail waiting for him. Things, we learn, are not what they seem, and both are keeping secrets from the other.

As the play opens she has prepared his breakfast, takes the top off his boiled egg, and butters his toast, while he puts on his tie upstairs. They discuss how happy they are and how much they love each other. Eventually, he dons a period coat and hat, and leaves for work. All appears to be perfect. There’s no such thing, as we discover. Their refrigerator is a sham. The only part that works is the interior light. It could be a metaphor for their lives.

At the start of the second Act, we get a flashback to three years before. He is a successful property valuer in the real estate industry, and she is working in the finance sector. They have already set up their home in the style of the 50s and things are about to change. Her job is being eliminated, and she has been offered a redundancy package. His income is sufficient to support them both, so she proposes that they move on a step further by her not taking another job, but staying at home full-time. He agrees to her idea, for a six-month trial. We then return to the present, when this arrangement has been running for three years and they have settled into the routine. Things are about to change, secrets be revealed, problems must be faced, and solutions found.

Everything revolves around Judy, the central character, who is the most enthusiastic and dedicated of the four time-travellers, even refusing to buy anything from the new shopping centre that was built after demolishing an old building that she loved. Alicia Zorkovic, as Judy, is onstage for almost the entire time, seemingly constantly on the move, running around after Jonny, and her guests. She has a huge amount of dialogue, so a few hiccups and miss-starts are, therefore, forgivable. Her interpretation of Judy develops wonderfully as she changes from the bright and breezy, happy housewife, without a care in the world, to the pragmatic woman who has been through a lot and come to a new understanding. It is quite a journey.

Jonny appears, at first, to be as committed as Judy, but, away from home, he cannot avoid the occasional slip into the 21st Century due to the demands of his job. His new boss, Alex, suggests that his 50s attire might be affecting his relationships with clients, causing a decline in his performance and a reduction in income, which will adversely impact their lives. Steven Bills, as Jonny, presents a man doing his best to live in the 50s, with his wife doing everything for him, but missing some of the things that a modern man does, sharing in the work around the house, bringing his wife breakfast in bed, cooking a meal. He gives a well-considered performance.

Fran is only part-time in the 1950s as she has a job, and freely admits that domesticity is far from being her forte. She appears to favour the parts of the 50s that are fun, and not too demanding. Fran is played with vibrancy, by Jessica Corrie, as a light-hearted, fun-loving young woman, enjoying the 50s style of living, but not taking it too seriously.

Marcus turns out to be a little too close to the 50s in his outdated and, quite frankly, disgusting attitudes toward women. He ends up suspended from his job when his personal assistant accuses him of sexual harassment. Marcus is played by Adam Schultz, nicely displaying a fun character at first, perhaps a little too friendly, and transitioning later to reveal his sleazy nature in full.

Judy’s mother, Sylvia, disapproves of her daughter’s chosen path. She lived through the 50s and has a scene that any actor would love, in which she opens up to her daughter, displaying her feelings about the waste of Judy’s university degree, turning her back on decades of feminism, and complete lack of knowledge about how bad the 50s really were. Deborah Walsh gives us Sylvia as a strong woman, who has been through a lot in life, and brooks no nonsense. She gives that speech everything, in a tour de force.

Alex throws a spanner in the works by giving somebody else the promotion on which Jonny had been relying, and gives Judy a few home truths. Lani Gerbi plays Alex, who comes as a surprise to Judy, who had assumed that Jonny’s new boss was a man. Gerbi does a fine job as the straightforward boss, who finds a solution to her problem with Jonny, and his problem with the need for a promotion.

Gary Anderson’s elaborate set design is superb, and reminds me of my family’s annual trips to the Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia when I was a youngster growing up in London. We, of course, as a working-class family, could never afford any of the things that we looked at there, but we could dream. We rented rooms in a Victorian terrace house, and had old furniture, nothing like the home of The Martins. The house that Judy and Jonny have set up reflects the home of a very well-to-do couple or, at least, drawing on magazines and the Internet, what they think such a thing would have looked like. It is like a full-size doll house. The production was well-lit, as always, by lighting designer, Richard Parkhill.

The one thing that stood out, and will probably be the unfortunate lasting memory, is the numerous, ridiculously long scene changes that interrupted the flow of the play, continually disrupting the narrative. Not only were they excessively long, but some of the audience decided to pass the time by singing along with the songs that were played, sung by the likes of Dean Martin, Doris Day, and Frank Sinatra. Worse still, others, bored with waiting, saw it as a signal that they could pass the time in conversation, their talking, irritatingly, often running on into the opening of the following scenes, right up until the actors began to speak. With five scenes in Act 1, and another six in Act 2, plus a wordless coda, that’s a lot of time lost to scene changes.

It is an interesting play that has a good many thought-provoking underlying issues, and is presented effectively by a strong cast. Ignore the cold weather and have a night out at the theatre.

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