Home, I'm Darling

The Banbury Cross Players’ schedule has been severely disrupted by ongoing building work at The Mill Arts Centre; the auditorium floor there was quite badly damaged by flooding during the winter.  The Arts Centre has consequently installed a pop-up theatre in the local leisure centre, enabling the Players to bring this production into a new space.  The raked seating is quite shallow, and there is a bit of a sports hall acoustic despite the acres of sound-deadening blacks, but on the positive side the performance area is generously proportioned, and more than adequate for the downstairs of the 1950s house where the play is set.

The opening gives little away. Housewife Judy, dressed in the first of a series of rather fabulous 1950s frocks, summons her husband Johnny to breakfast.  She takes the top off his imaginary boiled egg.  Their conversation is stilted and inconsequential, and the impression is of amateur actors in a second-rate drama.  Was the rehearsal period long enough?  But just as I was starting to fear that this could prove to be a long evening, Judy fishes out her laptop, and the realisation dawns that very little here is as it seems.  Yes, these characters are acting out a drama, but it is one of their own making, and as the layers of artifice are stripped away we come to understand that this is actually a dissection of Judy and Johnny’s relationship, and particularly the gender divide within their marriage.

This was the most thought-provoking play I have seen in a while.  Why did Judy cling so tenaciously to her 1950s fantasy even when her house and her marriage were on the line?  Why was she quite so stubborn when it was clear even to her that the costs were far outweighing the benefits?  Is a decision sexist only if a person is being asked to do something that they don’t want to do?  The buzz amongst the audience at the end of the show was a thoughtful discussion about what we had witnessed.

It was evident that the cast understood their roles and knew them inside-out; lines were clear, with clever variation in tone and tempo to differentiate between what was real and what was essentially an act, and cues were hit crisply.  The blocking was very natural and entirely in keeping with the prevailing mood; confrontations often took place across a piece of furniture, such as the kitchen table, and the dancing (choreographed by Debby Andrews) was used as a loose metaphor for the state of Judy and Johnny’s relationship.  I also liked the mannered, choreographed scene changes which reinforced the idea that it was all for show.

The set was certainly well matched to Judy’s fantasy: the kitchen featured painted wooden fronts and an upright dresser in keeping with the design styles and colour palettes of the 1950s, and was packed with period details.  Judy’s succession of frocks were the highlights of the costume plot, but Johnny’s trousers were clearly of an appropriate material and cut, while Judy and Johnny’s contemporary clothes (particularly Judy’s jeans) were suitably everyday.  The lighting efficiently differentiated between the kitchen and the living room, and there was enough variation to provide a very different ambience for the scene set in the middle of the night.

This was a fascinating, thought-provoking production exploring gender politics within relationships: a constantly evolving study of Judy and Johnny’s marriage and lifestyle choices, elevated by fine performances and intelligent direction.

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