Theatre: Home, I’m Darling

The Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2 (0844-871 7623). Until 4 May Running time: 2hrs 30mins ★★★

Playwright Laura Wade is on a roll, said Ann Treneman in The Times. Last autumn her play The Watsons –a boldly playful adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel – won rave reviews in Chichester. Now another of her recent hits, Home, I’m Darling, has opened in the West End following runs at Theatr Clwyd and then the National Theatre. It tells the story – “stylised to the point of cartoon” – of Judy, a young married woman who is so afraid of modern life she tries to hold it at bay by creating a fantasy 1950s home. It isn’t exactly subtle and it’s 15 minutes too long. But it’s a strong production from Tamara Harvey; Katherine Parkinson is terrific as Judy; and it is “great to see a show that tackles feminism, sexual harassment and, perhaps most fascinating of all, fantasy home decoration”.

Designer Anna Fleischle’s colour-saturated pastiche of a 1950s American home, right down to the pineapple ice bucket, is extraordinary, agreed Tim Cornwell on The Arts Desk. There’s a green sitting room, yellow kitchen, muted turquoise bedroom, spindly legged sofas, and tubular light stands of the kind “my antique dealer friends now sell for vastly more than Georgian side tables”. As Parkinson sashays in wearing a candy-cane dress, with Mr Sandman on the radio, we ready ourselves to hear 1950s American accents. But in fact, we are in present-day Welwyn Garden City. This is retro-chic as lifestyle choice; a “living doll’s house” as a refuge from reality.

Parkinson’s “magnificent”, nuanced performance gradually reveals what lies behind Judy’s carefully constructed facade, said Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph. I can’t think of an actress better at switching from supreme control to brittleness in an instant, nor one so skilled at allowing you “to laugh at her character’s failings while being incredibly funny at the same time”. Richard Harrington impresses as her husband, Johnny, who seems happy at first to collude in Judy’s escapism, said Henry Hitchings in the London Evening Standard. And Susan Brown nails the “scathing impatience” of her mother, Sylvia, who knows that the 1950s weren’t nearly as idyllic as their boosters like to claim.