Set designers must love plays from the 1970s, as they always dive in with gusto to throw as much orange-and-brown tat as possible onto the stage. Living rooms of the period
were, in my memory, crammed full of bizarre knick-knacks, but is that accurate or just the fact that when we see living rooms decorated for the period, every cliché of the decade appears in them because that's funnier? Mike Britton is the designer in the 70s toybox this time, and if there's a lot of stuff in the front room of Laurence and Beverley, much of it is in fact right there in Mike Leigh's script in the suburban passive-aggressive classic,
Abigail's Party. Following huge success with
Noises Off, Lindsay Posner now directs a darker, more acidic comedy, but with similarly strong results.
