MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
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What's the point, Darling?
MARY CONWAY wonders what the mixed messages in a play about a woman’s quest to be the perfect 1950s housewife are aiming to communicate
Richard Harrington as Johnny and Katherine Parkinson as Judy in Home, I'm Darling
[(c) Manuel Harlan]
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
Home, I’m Darling
National Theatre, London
YOU never get short-changed at the National, especially when it comes to design and technical wizardry, and Laura Wade’s Home, I’m Darling is no exception.
With Anna Fleischle’s chocolate box set of a whole '50s house in spanking fresh colours, patterned wallpaper and manicured perfection, a soundtrack of stomping period classics and a flood of warm light ironically bathing the rooms in sunshine, the feeling is all of a simple and optimistic life.
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