REVIEW: Abigail’s Party at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley

As the action starts in the latest production of Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, you can’t help but feel a prickling sense of anticipation. This marvel of 1970’s British social dysfunction has once again graced the stage, proving that the party never truly ends, it simply finds a new host.

Drenched in nostalgia and plenty of gin, Abigail's Party invites us into the garish living room (designed with impeccable 70’s bad taste by Bek Palmer) of Beverly and Laurence Moss, a suburban couple who could give a masterclass in passive-aggressive warfare. They are hosting a soiree, a get-together for the neighbours, and, as is often the case when people are thrown together in this way, no one really wants to be there – not even Laurence, and it’s his house. Only Beverly is truly at ease, wafting from one guest to the next, offering them ‘just a little top up’ and trying to persuade them to eat the ‘cheese and pineapple ones’ she’s thrusting into their faces.

REVIEW: Abigail’s Party at New Victoria Theatre, Woking

It became very apparent rather quickly at Woking’s New Victoria Theatre I was one of only a handful of millennials there. The audience was dominated by significantly older generations, which is unsurprising given the success of Abigail’s Party in the 1970’s when it was popularised in a TV Mini-Series starring Alison Steadman.

In a cast of five, we see the joys of hosting a party in suburbia for those you don’t really know all that well. Lead by the outrageously pushy Beverley, her husband Laurence and their guests are plied with alcohol and nibbles throughout the evening as they aim to distract neighbour Sue from the shenanigans happening just down the road at her house while her daughter Abigail hosts a party of her own…

The set is simple – one stereotypically dated living room prepared for a party – decorated with a fibre-optic UFO light, vinyls, cube-patterend glassware, cigarette boxes and the holy grail of a 1970’s party: half a raw potato wrapped in tin foil with cocktails sticks of tinned pineapple and unnaturally yellow cheese cubes. That living room would have been the envy of my grandmother who loved to host her Tupperware parties back in the day, but to the modern eye it is truly heinous as I would hope set designer Janet Bird intended!

REVIEW: Abigail’s Party at the Queen's Theatre in Hornchurch

Mike Leigh’s 1977 play is a British Classic and earned this status through its method of creation with long improvisation sessions with the original cast and from its shocking expose of seventies suburbia manners and its conclusion when aired, after its first stage performances ,on the BBC Play for Today season; A series that often created shockwaves through its audiences. Alison Steadman created the dominant character, Beverly and it firmly established her as a brilliant actress.

It is now, of course, 41 years since the show was first produced and this new revival at the Queen's Hornchurch remains faithful to the original design and is firmly rooted in the late seventies. Set and Costume designer Lee Newby has created Beverly’s open plan home complete with loud patterned wallpaper , G-Plan furniture, leather sofa , white mock fur rug a lava lamp and a coloured fibre optic lamp. The Bar is centre stage. The pre show music also places us back in time with Hot Chocolate’s “You sexy thing” and Motown “Love machine”. For the matinee audience it was a trip back in time! It is also set in “theoretical Romford “just before the dawn of the era Mrs T and joining the European Economic Community as it was then called. Ironically given today’s political mess the locals in Hornchurch and the rest of the South East have benefitted hugely from the economic growth and house price growth that the era post this play’s time has generated. It makes the revival feel anachronistic and dated a piece stuck in the time it was written.