Theatre review: Home, I'm Darling - The Jewish Chronicle

I bought a record deck this week. I love it — the little crackle as the needle lands, the sheer mechanical process of lowering the arm. I’m disgracefully late to the vinyl revival, of course. But fads, fashions and popular movements of all kinds tend to be past their peak before I notice them.

I would be the very last revolutionary to belatedly storm the Winter Palace. But even I have always been aware of the pleasure associated with harking back, of reaching for what feels like a less complicated era, a time when truth seemed obvious and my mum and dad campaigned for Labour instead of being scared by them. Such comforts are all distilled in that crackle of the record player’s needle, a sound that can be heard between scenes in this hugely enjoyable, yet annoyingly lacking, new comedy by Laura Wade.

First seen in July at Theatr Clwyd, it arrives at the National on a wave of positive reviews, all of which I’d advise you to avoid, though given that you are reading this one, I see the flaw in that suggestion.

It’s just that I worry that you will have too much information to fully enjoy one of the best visual jokes I have seen in a play. It is a moment of realisation that arrives in Tamara Harvey’s production right at the end of the first scene. So let us skate past it and focus instead on what you need to know, which is that Judy (Katherine Parkinson) and Johnny (Richard Harrington) are living the dream. That is to say, instead of hankering after a bygone era, they are living it.

Driven by Judy’s urge to opt out of modern life, and opt in to the 1950s when, as she puts it, society was more caring, she has given up her career running a finance department and fully embraced the roles of domestic goddess and housewife.

The trigger to this blandification of her life was dabbling in retro faddism with friends Fran (Kathryn Drysdale) and Marcus (Barnaby Kay) who understand the attraction of wearing the garb, dancing the dances, but haven’t quite devoted their lives to the cause in the way that Judy and Johnny have.

Inevitably, cracks in the couple’s existence begin to show. Bills become harder to pay with just one income. But, says Judy, this is feminism in action. Being at home cooking, cleaning and greeting Johnny with a pair of slippers and a cocktail when he returns from work, is her choice. And what is feminism if it isn’t women being able to choose?

Wade is as cutting about this social phenomenon as she was about the culture enshrined by the Bullingdon Club in her play — and then film — Posh.

But though Parkinson superbly captures the psychology behind her nostalgia, frustratingly Wade never establishes what it is that Judy is running from that has made her so utterly afraid of the modern world.

There is a terrific debunking scene when Judy’s mother (the excellent Sian Thomas) recounts everything that was awful about the era she moved on from and which her daughter has moved back to. But rather than eliciting a riposte, Judy retreats further into her self-denial.

As her husband, Johnny, Harrington is superb, playing the retro role of doted-on husband with a light touch and a well-adjusted irony that prevents Johnny and Judy’s life choices from appearing like those of a couple of crackpots.

If the play had been written at almost any other time since the war, it would almost certainly leave you with the comforting sense that modern life is far better than the fantasised version of good old days. Though, with things being as they are, you could be forgiven for thinking that Judy has a point.