Toxic Nostalgia Deconstructed in Dundas Little Theatre’s “Home, I’m Darling”

By: Emily R. Zarevich, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Burlington Local-News.ca

He calls it an arrangement. She calls it a marriage. Their family and friends, as well as the audience, call it the most dysfunctional case of “Golden Age Syndrome” they’ve ever seen. On Friday, January 23, 2026, Dundas Little Theatre premiered their production of British playwright Laura Wade’s 2018 Home, I’m Darling, a dark comedy in two acts that presents a supreme question overwhelmingly relevant today, in a digital age of online “aesthetic movements” and the growing “tradwife” internet subculture. How far can you romanticize a past decade before it starts to destroy your life and erode your sense of identity?

Judy, played by Antoinette Laleon, is married to Johnny, played by Aleks Ristic. It’s the 2000s, and most households have cell phones, cupboards full of sweatpants, and two-person incomes, but Judy and Johnny are obsessed with the 1950s to an absurd degree. Their interior decoration is 1950s. Their car is 1950s. They dress like a wholesome 1950s couple, and even their attitudes towards dividing adult responsibilities are staunchly 1950s. Judy has given up a successful career in finance to essentially play house, twirling around her kitchen in vintage frocks while adorned with an impractical strand of pearls. When Johnny comes home from work, she fusses over him like he’s the prime minister, fixing him cocktails, serving him home-cooked food, and not allowing him to lift a finger for himself in the home sphere. Simone de Beauvoir would have been appalled.

The couple’s family, friends, and coworkers are reasonably concerned. However, their misogynist acquaintance Marcus (played by Myles Rusak) is impressed by Judy’s domestic competence and wants his own wife Fran (played by Liz Buchanan) to give up her career as a stylist and tend to their home full-time. Fran tries, but her cooking and cleaning skills are (realistically) flawed, and she doesn’t want to give up her life’s work. Johnny’s bewildered boss Alex, played by Sarah Farrant, is awkwardly served a gimlet, devilled eggs, and cheese straws while visiting Judy and Johnny’s home, and looks visibly uncomfortable on their couch. She promptly bursts Judy’s bubble by reminding her that the 1950s were rife with racism and homophobia and weren’t idealistic for everyone. A harsh dishing out of reality to accompany the nibbles and drinks.

But the one most vocal about Judy and Johnny’s adopted lifestyle is undoubtedly Judy’s feminist mother Sylvia, played by Barb Dickie. Sylvia is embarrassed by Judy’s status as a housewife. What is she supposed to tell her friends? Dickie stole the spotlight in Act Two with Sylvia’s impassioned speech about how women have had to claw their way out of the injustices imposed on them during the 1950s and beyond. Judy has, in her mother’s eyes, turned her back on everything the feminist movement has fought for. The right for women to divorce their husbands, equal pay, abortion and birth control, better healthcare, better working conditions, a better life; Dickie earned an appreciative round of applause from the audience.  

Sylvia and Judy’s mother-daughter relationship is complicated. It’s implied that a childhood growing up among militant feminists left Judy feeling emotionally neglected, despite the group’s best intentions to inspire confidence and independence in the next generation of women. Laleon plays Judy as a full psychiatric study. Audiences will be left wondering what caused her to spiral so dramatically from a regular, functioning working woman to an obsessive homemaker who never seems to leave her home and cannot tolerate even a dirty dish in the sink.

It’s clear that the housewife persona isn’t really fulfilling Judy at all. She’s not really living. She’s hiding from the real world. Financial trouble and Johnny’s dissatisfaction with all the playacting are a disguised life preserver thrown to her just in the nick of time. To grow as a person, she has to acknowledge that polka dot dresses with cinched waists, gin, and floor polish aren’t the answers to the problems in her life. She and Johnny must learn to work together on equal terms to achieve their objectives. That’s the modern way, and it’s much better than women having to endure all their suffering in silence and with a cheery smile plastered on.

A magnificent set is the backdrop of all the forced domestic bliss, hosted social activities gone wrong, and inevitable confrontations between the unhappy couple. Set designer Michelle Chan and crew have assembled a pristinely clean ‘50s homestead with teal green cabinets, checkered rugs, geometric wallpaper, and a vintage record player that serves as a direct reflection of Judy and Johnny’s warped mental states. Their time capsule house, into which they’ve poured so much of their energy and resources, is a period showroom, not a real home. It’s too clean. It’s too organized. It’s too perfect. It’s not a place where its inhabitants or guests are able to relax or express themselves freely. It’s appropriately stifling and in want of crooked family photos, a pair of dirty shoes in the foyer, a stain with a story — something disruptive, personal, and human.

When Johnny flings the impeccably stylish throw cushions on the floor in a tense, climactic scene, you can really feel his pent-up frustration and rage at having to keep up the façade of unsullied paradise for so long. Luckily, realistic character development for both the leads and healthy, honest communication might just be the thing to help them move into the twenty-first century like the rest of us.

Due to anticipated, dangerous weather conditions, the matinee show scheduled for Sunday, January 25, 2026, has been cancelled. However, intrigued theatregoers can still attend performances of Home, I’m Darling from Friday, January 30, 2026, to Sunday, February 8, 2026. Tickets can be bought here.