Laura Wade’s witty, sad and clever play is a portrait of crippling obsession. Its central character, Judy, presents herself as a doting Fifties housewife — dutifully descaling the kitchen taps with lemon juice, fetching her husband Johnny’s slippers and making him sickly cocktails.
Yet it soon becomes apparent that she’s a 21st-century woman, who after losing a well-paid job has retreated into a fantasy version of a past she never knew. Friends Fran and Marcus share her delight in all things retro, but for them it’s a hobby, whereas for Judy it’s a crutch. The safe space she’s created is an attempt to obliterate memories of teenage unhappiness.
Katherine Parkinson, best-known as technophobic Jen in The IT Crowd, captures Judy’s brittleness, neurotic energy and love of routine. Trotting around the cul-de-sac she’s backed herself into, she’s both amusingly perky and distressingly anxious.
Alongside her, Richard Harrington impresses as Johnny, who at first seems pleased to collude with her escapism, and Susan Brown nails the scathing impatience of Judy’s mother Sylvia, who’s keen to point out that the Fifties weren’t as idyllic as their boosters like to claim.
Tamara Harvey’s production, with its spot-on period playlist and a brilliantly detailed doll’s house set by Anna Fleischle, began life at Theatr Clwyd and arrives in the West End after a run at the National Theatre. It’s a touch slow to find its feet here, and the second half is a little baggy. But this is an intriguing study of marriage’s reliance on role-play, as well as an original, sometimes unsettling look at the masks people put on in order to conceal their pain.
Until April 13
