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Jessica Ransom as Judy and Neil McDermott as Johnny Home, I’m Darling The Alexandra Theatre ***** If we have a word for sexual arousal
caused by falling down stairs – Climacophilia if you want to drop it in
conversation next time you are in the pub – surely there is a word for
wanting to live in the 1950s. Nostalgia just doesn’t cut it, that implies you
are harking back to that time in your life when skies were always blue,
the sun always shone and your knees didn’t complain when you stood up.
Whatever it was, you had to have been there. The Americans come nearest to it, they have
coined the term Tradwives, traditional wives, which has become more than
a thing, it is a movement, wives who see the husband is the breadwinner,
wives the home makers and the nuclear family as everything. Its disciples embrace a sort of perfect life,
ordered and simple, except it is one that never really existed, ask
anyone who lived through it, yet Judy lives it just the same. She gave up her well-paid job, or at least
decided to take redundancy, and decided on being a housewife, just for
six months, to see if it worked. Husband Johnny, with a decent salary and good
commission, went along with it. They could manage comfortably on his
salary and, after all there was Judy’s redundo to help the transition –
a transition that would see husband as provider and Judy as housewife,
the back to the 1950’s lifestyle which started it all. She dusting and polishing – with time to dust behind things – getting up each morning to run husband’s bath and make his favourite breakfast then making Johnny’s tea and greeting him with a kiss, his slippers and a drink on his arrival home. We join them three years on, at breakfast in
their 1950’s world of Formica décor, with no mobile phones, a fridge
that was around for the last coronation and clothes best described as
vintage. The radio – trannies arrived in the UK the 1950s – permanently
tuned to a rock and roll station. Neil McDermott (EastEnders) gave us a lovey dovey
husband in Johnny: it is not an easy role for Johnny to play, living 70
years ago at home and working in the future, or today as we call it,
outside, especially dressed as an extra in an Ealing comedy driving a
car almost twice as old as you are.
Jessica Ransom (Doc Martin) revels in the past as
wife Judy, dressed as a 50’s prom queen in her fit-and-flare dresses.
They are living an idyllic, black and white, poorly written, Hollywood B
movie Iifestyle – almost a cut down version of The Trueman Show. Their happiness has a ring of . . . well, truth
is not a word that springs to mind. There is almost a ring of fear
there, almost an element of walking on egg shells, as if the 50’s bubble
needs not just defending but protecting. Intruders into the world include Johnny’s boss,
Alex, played by Shanez Pattni. She is young, attractive and Judy is
afraid Johnny is having an affair with her, not true, but fear can
spread like cancer, and after all Johnny was seen with her at Pizza
Pronto in the new shopping mall. The new shopping mall Judy and Johnny had vowed
never to visit as it had been built on the site of a favourite landmark
– a derelict soap factory, presumably with a heyday in the 50s. He had been seen there by Fran, played by Cassie
Bradley. Fran is an old friend and the 1950s is a foreign land she has
no intention of visiting. As for endless days of cleaning and home
baking . . . “The longest recipe I’ve used this week is pierce film
lid”, she tells us. She has a happy marriage to Marcus played by
understudy Steve Blacker-Barrowman on Press night. Marcus has a vague
interest in the 50s, at least as far as the music and its jiving and
classic cars are concerned. He also, it seems, has more than passing
interest in the . . . more liberal, as in blind eye, attitudes to sexual
harassment in the workplace in the 1950s, which is one aspect Judy
doesn’t embrace, but is one that is set to come back to bite Marcus with
a vengeance. Then there is mum Sylvia played by Diane Keen
(Doctors, The Cuckoo Waltz) who tolerates her daughter’s obsession with
the 50s to a point, a point that runs out in a much darker second act. The first act is scene setting, a light and
frothy comedy about a couple as shallow as a pavement puddle drying in
the sun, living a light-hearted life in the past, sunshine and roses
every day. The second act the dark clouds are rolling in and
the roses have faded. Sylvia gives her daughter what for, the
unvarnished truth about her divorced husband, the dead father Judy
adores, laying bare the reality of life in the 50s, and slamming her for
giving up all the rights, equalities and liberation that the women of
her own generation had fought for and won. Seventy years of struggle
discarded in an ersatz version of the past. Marcus’s groin led attitude to his PA and
subsequent enforced gardening leave gives Judy another hint of real life
in the 50s and when Johnny’s financially lifesaving promotion goes belly
up and his commission continues to fall, the 2023 ordure is about to hit
the 1950’s fan. Playwright Laura Wade has built the plot layer
upon layer, like a well pulled pint with a frothy start, settling down,
and over time becoming flat and stale, even bitter. Johnny and Judy, Fran and Marcus, are happy
marriages no more, the echoes of the 50s doing them both in. But Wade
leaves us with at least some hope. Johnny and Judy are at least talking,
and trying. For Judy the 50s has become almost a prison, even
when it is shown to be a sham, a pointless game, she is afraid to leave
it, clinging on to her fantasy, while for Johnny, it is something he did
for her, but it took away something from him, his chance to be a
husband, to show he cared – little things like giving her a cup of tea
in bed in the morning. It questions the sexual divide, not physical, the
position of men and women, the freedoms, liberations fought for and won
and the responsibilities and needs we cannot afford to forget or lose as
collateral damage. Anna Fleischle’s set is brilliant, with its
cheese plant and pineapple ice bucket, purple bedroom and pink bathroom
upstairs and a sitting room and kitchen in a style old enough to claim a
bus pass along with costumes that would not look out of place in Grease. Lighting (Lucy Carter) and sound (Tom Gibbons)
work hard and well to keep things going, and for a play we even have
choreography (Charlotte Broom) thanks to director Tamara Harvey cleverly
using, usually Fran and Marcus, to dance and add and remove props to 50s
classic song during scene changes, a change in time or costume changes.
It adds a period interest. It is a clever play, beautifully acted, all about
feminism, relationships, marriage and above all, life, which has a
delayed reaction in that it entertains with a sort of intellectual
aftertaste, giving you something to think about on your way home. To
29-04-23 Roger Clarke 25-04-23 |
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