Nostalgic partnership: 'Home, I'm Darling' a comedic take on the quest to be the perfect ’50s 'trad wife'

Behind the gingham curtains, being a domestic goddess isn’t as easy as it looks.

When the high-achieving professional Judy loses her job, she decides to become a “trad wife,” all circle skirts, aprons and submissiveness in a haze of 1950s nostalgia.

But 21st century gender politics still lurk beneath her Formica countertop.

West End Productions is staging the Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade’s “Home, I’m Darling” on weekends from Friday, Aug. 30, through Sept. 15.

The play is a dark comedy about a woman’s quest to become the perfect 1950s housewife. The British trad wife movement encourages women to choose roles of domesticity and compliance to their husbands.

Judy promises her husband she will cook, iron his shirts, and that domesticity will enhance their sex life.

She becomes dedicated to cleaning the backs of things and serving deviled eggs. What she also gets is a throwback dependence on men and a narrowing of her choices.

Her husband Johnny already prefers ’50s clothing, so he agrees.

“Three years later, she’s still doing it,” said director Colleen Neary McClure. “It causes a bit of a strain on the marriage.”

The couple have invested in redecorating their home ’50s style, right down to the old refrigerator.

Judy’s reality, firmly entrenched in her housewifely commitment to having perfect dinners ready and giving devoted attention to her husband, is challenged by her comedic “hippified” friend.

Her mother Sylvia, who marched for feminist causes, is aghast.

“She wants her daughter to do something more fulfilling,” Neary McClure said. “She says, ‘This is not what we fought for. I thought you’d get it by osmosis.’ ”

Judy’s nostalgia for supposedly better times rather overlooks the freezing housing, the single-income austerity and the general lack of power that actually characterized the era.

She trades people management for domestic management.

Eventually, her illusions crumble.

Johnny “believes he’s lost his wife,” Neary McClure said. “She’s not happy by the end.

“It explores a lot of current day issues, but it’s incredibly funny,” she added. “The message for me is we’ve got to look for the joy and peace in our lives. Live in the present, make the most of what you have.”

West End Productions focuses exclusively on plays from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.