Fresh from success in the UK, Laura Wade’s satire Home, I’m Darling opens Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2020 season with a swirl of 1950s skirts and dollhouse-perfect domesticity. It looks fab, leading lady Nikki Shiels is a treat, and the script is a clever confection, but ultimately Wade’s exploration of gender roles, feminism and identity feels like a veneer of retro Formica laminate.

Nikki Shiels and Toby Truslove. Photograph © Jeff Busby

Shiels plays Judy, who we first meet as she literally dances through breakfast preparations in heels, full skirt and frilly little apron, while husband Johnny completes his own classic 1950s look upstairs. In this dumbshow of post-war domestic bliss, the English couple are surrounded by everything from 50s furniture and appliances to music. It’s beautiful to watch, and gently tickles the funny bone as if to say with a wink and a nudge, “yes, of course this is too good to be true”.

After they declare how outrageously happy they are over breakfast, and Johnny goes to work with trilby, coat and a lunch lovingly packed by Judy, we discover just how unreal it all is. Unfortunately there’s no way to review Home,...