Abigail's Party - Review

Stratford East, London

****

Written by Mike Leigh

Directed by Nadia Fall

Tamzin Outhwaite

Tardis-like, Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party takes us back in time nearly 50 years in his eviscerating glimpse into UK suburban life. Played out over a Demis Roussos soundtrack and accompanied by cubes of cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, one starts to get a hint of the 1970s culture and attitudes that this play so brilliantly showcases.

Tamzin Outhwaite dominates the play's action (that never leaves her front room) as Beverly, dressed like a wannabe Greek goddess and trying desperately, futilely, to bring a whirl of glamour into her dull marriage to estate-agent Laurence (Kevin Bishop) by having invited the neighbours round for drinks, nibbles and endlessly proffered cigarettes.

In her inept attempts at sophistication, Beverly is a Hyacinth Bucket crossed with Sybil Fawlty, but unlike those two giants of the UK’s comedy landscape, she is a woman with a darker and more vulnerable side. She cannot restrain herself from outrageously provocative flirting with neighbour Tony (Omar Malik), a former professional footballer who in terms of his masculine sexuality, possesses everything that she perceives the inadequate Laurence to lack. And yet, in the play’s finale (no spoilers here) Beverly reveals herself to be both deeply loving of, and possibly emotionally dependant upon, her husband. Beverly is an inspired creation by Leigh, and in Outhwaite’s interpretation, truly one of the most exciting performances to be found in London today.

The supporting actors are similarly excellent in their contributions to this domesticated evening from hell. Ashna Rabheru plays Angela, Tony’s wife. A nurse by profession, yet dominated brutally and bullyingly at home by her husband, Rabheru captures Angela’s naïve yet knowing complexities with a fine understanding. Laurence in his own way is as ghastly as his wife and Bishop does well to capture his aspirational, faux cultural-wisdom alongside his thinly veiled racism.   There is just a hint of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, as he and Beverly spar in the ring of their unhappy union.

Completing this exquisitely observed quintet is Pandora Colin as divorcee neighbour Susan and mother of the (unseen) 15 year-old Abigail who has been left at home across the road, hosting her eponymous rowdy teenage house party. 

Stratford East’s Artistic Director Nadia Fall directs with perceptive wisdom, her work enhanced by Peter McKintosh’s wonderfully evocative set and costume designs.

Fabulous writing, wonderfully performed – and all at an affordable ticket price too. This production of Abigail’s Party is what a great night at the theatre is all about. 

Runs until 12th October

Photo credit: Mark Senior

Abigail's Party - Review

Park Theatre, London

****

Written by Mike Leigh

Directed by Vivienne Garnett

Kellie Shirley

It is 44 years since Mike Leigh's Abigail’s Party premiered and what was then a cruelly incisive glimpse of England’s suburbia is now very much a period piece. Leigh’s creative scalpel was merciless in his exposition of social ambition, sexual inadequacies, and rat-race frustrations. Viewed through the prism of 2021, the play’s observations of domestic abuse and in particular Tony’s treatment of Angela his wife, are chilling. That the Park’s modern-day audience can laugh at some of Angela’s distress is even more worrying and offers an uncomfortable perspective on a part of today’s theatre-going audience as much as it does a comment on life in 1977.

Vivienne Garnett’s production is a carefully crafted drama and her company are an ensemble of perfectly weighted performances. Driving the piece is Kellie Shirley’s Beverley, perpetually disappointed by estate-agent husband Laurence (Ryan Early) and keen to impress her neighbours with her awkward and misplaced ostentatiousness. Shirley’s performance is a masterpiece of both under and overstatement, garishly dispensing gin and tonics yet smouldering with pent-up unsatisfied desire in the arms of a slow dance with Tony (Matt Di Angelo).

Emma Noakes’ Angela, albeit for differing reasons, is a performance as finely delivered as Shirley’s. A nurse by profession, Angela is a much belittled, humbled and humiliated woman. Not an easy part to portray but Noakes smashes it out of the park!

Early’s Laurence is a two-dimensional blustering popinjay but again, masterfully captured. Di Angelo’s ex-footballer Tony however is the menacing character whose underlying ugliness (hidden beneath a physique of muscular physicality) is only hinted at and about whom we want to know more. Completing the quintet is single-mum Susan, well delivered by Barbara D’Alterio, but whose role in the piece is little more than a foil to the complex dynamics that play out between the two married couples.

For those of us who lived the Seventies the cheese and pineapple cocktail sticks and Demis Roussos LPs are a blast from the past. For younger folk, they can gasp at the crap food and socially acceptable cigarettes that really were a sign of the times. Beth Colley’s set design is a garishly wonderful nod to an era that is thankfully many decades behind us.

At times a troubling play to watch and laugh at but above all, brilliantly performed. Another gem from the Park Theatre.

Runs until 4th December

Photo credit: Christian Davies