The cheese and pineapple cocktail stick is back in the West End along with the play that used it to skewer Britain’s aspirational classes.
Set in an Essex suburban living room Mike Leigh’s 1977 Bacardi and gin- fulled party play is often described as a comedy of manners. It peels back British niceties and etiquette to reveal the almost murderous dissatisfaction that it claims underlies suburban life.
As the action reveals fathom-deep discontent of life among mod-cons, one wonders what it is about the burbs that Leigh and his original cast– most famously Alison Steadman – so hate about the suburbs.
They weren’t alone. HG Wells despised it for its “over-ripened gardens and no longer brilliant villas”. The Poet Laureate John Betjemen wanted to bomb it and in his sitcom Tony Hancock conveyed how suburbia’s comfort and conformity can drive a person to existential despair.
Yet nearly 50 years after Leigh’s play was created, what was once celebrated as the work’s social insight now comes across as snobbery. Only the timid, divorced, upper-middle class Sue (Pandora Colin), who through no fault of her own never needed to aspire to anything, is not judged.
Yet none of this prevents the evening from being a toe-curlingly compelling watch. The evening is ruled by party host Beverly, the role that launched Steadman, played here by a superb Tamzin Outhwaite. She is well supported by Kevin Bishop as her hard-working estate agent husband Laurence who is perhaps the most harshly judged as he attempts to impress his guests Angela and Tony with his leather-bound complete works of Dickens. With Farrah Fawcett curls and sporting an orange dress that is the last word in Seventies chic, Outhwaite’s Bev could grace a 70s hairspray ad. She is the queen of disco and in total command of the ruthless manipulation that Bev dresses up as empathy. It could be said that Nadia Fall’s production, which was first seen in Stratford East a couple of years ago, over-eggs this point.
On two occasions the show ditches Leigh’s real-time naturalism for pop video-like musical interludes. In one, Beverley’s guests become robotic mannequins, arms jerking in rhythm of the blaring music as Bev serenely walks among them like a master puppeteer. But on the plus these episodes get the pulse racing and when the action snaps back to normality, there is a sense that everyone in this unsafe space is doomed.
Abigail’s Party is at Harold Pinter Theatre
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