Written by Laura Wade

Directed by Caroline Clark

Produced by Raven Players @ Raven Theater | May 2025

Behind the gingham curtains, being a domestic goddess isn’t as easy as it looks. Home, I’m Darling is Laura Wade’s dark comedy about sex, cake, and the quest to be the perfect 1950s housewife. The play explores the very human concept of identity, the current rise of the tradwife movement, and our collective nostalgia for “the good old days” which weren’t, of course, quite as good as we may remember. Winner of the 2019 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.

Directors Notes, May 2025

“When did women decide to give up the world and go back home?” 

― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Welcome home, darling audience! As you settle in, prepare to be transported across the pond, into a meticulously crafted 1950s suburban home in England, the heart of Judy and Johnny's life together. The mid-century design and fashion provide the ideal framework for a seemingly simpler time, while inviting us to explore our complex relationship with the past. 

Before we slip back in time, a note about context. Home, I’m Darling premiered in 2018, amid the crest of fourth-wave feminism, marked by the “me too” and “lean in” movements, using social media to advocate female empowerment and women’s efforts to balance career and family. Today, a scant seven years later, the cultural landscape has shifted with the rise of “tradwife” trends and influencers on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, showcasing alluring videos of women in vintage attire embracing homemaking and rejecting the possibility of women “having it all”. And so it is that this play feels even more relevant now than when it premiered, with Judy embodying the essence of a mid-20th-century housewife: struggling to balance domestic ideals with the realities of an ever-changing world.

I hope you enjoy our journey into a deceptively “simpler time” where things are rarely what they seem to be at first glance. The delightfully dark, sharp, and distinctly British humor provides fertile ground for a number of provocative topics to ponder: the complexities of identity, the allure – and limitations – of nostalgia, and the significance of the choices we make in reconciling the past with our present realities.

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Photo Credits: Dennis Whitaker