Abigail's Party
- Robert Beale
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Mike Leigh
Royal Exchange Theatre Company
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
April 4-May 24, 2025: 2 hrs 20 mins
Mike Leigh’s window on the world of late 1970s suburban life has been brought Up North by director Natalie Abrahami and the Royal Exchange Theatre Company, and the move works beautifully: it’s every bit as funny as we’ve seen before. Subtle it ain’t.
Abigail’s Party was first performed in 1977 and is set in precisely that era, in Essex. Beverley Moss (the programme book has Americanised her name to Beverly, I suppose symbolically of something) is throwing an evening drinks party for newly-wed and newly-moved-in neighbours Angela and Tony, along with Susan, who is older, divorced and lives in a bigger house down the road. The (unseen) party of the title is that of Susan’s 15-year-old daughter, who Sue has left with her friends in Sue’s house. All the adults are concerned about what the young folk might be getting up to, snogging each other being their main concern – no hint of anything worse.
Beverl(e)y is married to estate agent Laurence, a busy man, and has been a retail beautician in her past, but doesn’t work now. She is the hostess from hell, plying her guests with drinks and smokes whether they want them or not, and as the booze takes effect we begin to see that this marriage is a rather rocky one. Tony, a tough guy and man of few words, is already highly dominant of his nurse wife (she works at “Wythenshawe” in this version). There’s lots of observation of the habits and aspirations of the two nouveau-slightly-riche couples, while Susan, whose ex-husband is an architect, is brought up proper: she arrives with a bottle of wine, expecting a dinner party, and after too much gin and tonic with only cheese and pineapple cocktail sticks and crisps to soak it up, ends the first half puking in the lavatory.
It's considered a comedy classic these days, and for a certain demographic shows a world they (we) remember only too clearly. The production’s run has already been extended, and it seems the afternoon shows are filling even faster than the evening ones, which might indicate something.
You enter the theatre building to the sound of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie (Baccara, vintage 1977), and the text requires LP album tracks by Jose Feliciano and Demis Roussos to be played on the stereo in the living room. Designer Peter Butler fills the stage with furniture, as indeed he has to for the Exchange’s in-the-round configuration, with both a kitchen and lavatory on the set.
He’s got the style of the slightly trendy, little-bit wealthy Beverley and Laurence, too – not just any old woodchip stuff, but “tasteful” tubular metal and quality veneers. The enormous flower-bunch of a fibre-optic lamp, hanging over the central stage, is also derived from the text, though I think Mike Leigh had something smaller in mind.
Many may remember the old BBC Play For Today version with Alison Steadman as Beverley: there have been several touring versions of the play more recently, and this time the laughs come thick and fast from the start. Kym Marsh has really nailed her Beverly as a Northerner; the audience knows her repeated “Fantaastic”, her “This is it…” and (my favourite), “To be honest with you …” are all there to be funny. Even her decision to chill Susan’s offered bottle of Beaujolais was comic to some. Her dancing scenes (where the set revolves, for no other reason than to vary the view) are hilarious. Can Beverley ever be a sympathetic character? It doesn’t seem so, in a Northern setting.
Tupele Dorgu (Susan) and Yasmin Taheri (Angela) have each worked out exactly how to bring their characters to life in Northern terms, though the latter’s over-enthusiastic manipulation of Susan (“Lean forward… lean back…”) when she clicks into nurse routine must have been down to the drink, I guess.
But the two men – both unreconstructed chauvinist pigs of their era, without a doubt – are interesting. Graeme Hawley’s Laurence is trying to be both suave and masterful at the same time, but up against a Northern woman he’s not getting there: his frustration is palpable. Kyle Rowe is really scary, a big bloke who’s definitely close to his inner caveman: you used to meet a few of them in 1977, and you probably still do.
More info and tickets here
