Theatre review: Abigail's Party

Mike Leigh's name might always be brought up in relation to a kind of bleak, gritty realism, but it's his 1977 black comedy Abigail's Party that remains his most famous, beloved, and frequently-revived play. Of course we never see Abigail or her party - that's going on a few doors down in a street in suburban Essex. Instead we're at what's meant to be a much more sophisticated, adult soirée at the home of Beverley (Tamzin Outhwaite) and Laurence (Kevin Bishop,) who've asked round new neighbours Angela (Lauren Patel) and Tony (Omar Malik) to welcome them to the neighbourhood. An awkward fifth wheel in the group is Abigail's mother Sue (Pandora Colin,) who's been invited along so she can escape the teenage chaos going on in her own house. But with Beverley in charge things don't stay much calmer here for long.

Plying her guests with bottomless gin and tonics and necking two herself for every one she gives them, Beverley launches into a passive-aggressive evening of humblebragging, sniping at her husband and instilling paranoia in Sue.

Nadia Fall's production doesn't try to reinvent the wheel - Peter McKintosh's set and costumes throw as much 1970s orange and beige at the stage as it can take, and then throw in a little more, while Demis Roussos and cheese-and-pineapple on cocktail sticks are all present and correct. Fall does also bookmark the acts with slightly dreamlike dance breaks that give Outhwaite a chance to hint at the sexually aggressive side that Bev will enthusiastically aim at Tony.

Outhwaite gets to make the character her own as she very quickly gets her guests drunk enough that she can drop any pretence of being the gracious host and can just openly show contempt and score points off them. What I really liked about her performance was how well it was pitched to the size of the theatre - even from the Balcony, some of her funniest moments come from little head-turns and expressions that flash across her face for a second.

All five characters get their moments but Ange is the other reliable scene-stealer and Patel gives us a timid little bird woman who has an abrupt personality change once she gets a drink in her, chattering enough to make up for all the silence she endures with her monosyllabic husband.

Making the younger couple South Asian is an understated way of highlighting what some of the tensions going on under the characters' surface might be, particularly when it comes to Laurence's "concerns" about the changes to the local area, while turning the gag about Ange's pilchard curry into a whole different joke. The production really hits all the comic notes, perhaps to the detriment of the darker underside - Bishop is giving more henpecked husband than exhausted workaholic so the abrupt ending feels unearned. But overall this provides a recognisable portrait of suburban monsters that's far more universal than the '70s trappings it's presented in.

Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh is booking until the 19th of September at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.