LAURA Wade’s satire, Home I’m Darling is based on the fifties presumption that a woman’s place is in the home.

It features Judy and Johnny, the former with a high powered job and the latter paying his way in a less high profile post.

When she’s made redundant, Judy longs for the past when women only had housework to focus on.

So she splashes her redundancy pay to take the couple back to that era.

One person despises this. She is Judy’s mother, a feminist who brought her up in a commune. Could this be Judy’s rebellion against all that?

There is a memorable scene when Susan Brown, who plays Sylvia, her mother, tells Judy what life was really like in an era of freezing cold houses and rationing.

Every night Johnny returns from work to a spotless home and a cooked meal prepared from scratch.

What could be better? Pressures such as mortgage payments emerge and, early on, a laptop appears on the kitchen table.

Katherine Parkinson brings Judy to life spotlighting her fragility and the punctures which appear in her ‘perfect’ lifestyle.

Her husband, Johnny, played by Jo Stone-Fewings, finds it difficult to combine the real world with this fiction of an existence.

Judy’s friend, Fran, Siubhan Harrison is a typical modern woman whose husband, Marcus, Hywel Morgan, is accused of sexual harassment at work.

Their situation contrasts with the other couple’s change of lifestyle yet they introduce authentic touches with their rock n’roll dancing.

The set design of the house is imaginative.

Although there are no weak links, it is Katherine Parkinson’s exceptional skill that holds this wordy play together. Were it to be shortened it might have greater impact.

Home I’m Darling continues at the Lowry until April 27.

For tickets, contact the Box Office, 0843 208 6000 or see thelowry.com. Star rating: * * *.

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