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Abigail's Party
By Mike Leigh
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Direction
Jonathan Fox
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Scenic design
Andy Hall
Lighting design
Brenda M. Veltre
Sound design
Kevin Dunayer
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Costume design
Moira Shaughnessey
Casting
Harriet Bass
Stage manager
Alison Dingle*
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The Cast
(in order of appearance)
Beverly......................................Henny Russell*
Laurence....................................Warren Kelley*
Angela............................................Anna Cody*
Tony.....................................Randall Newsome*
Susan......................................Pamela Wiggins*
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1977
by Jonathan Fox, Artistic Director
1977: Jimmy Carter, Saturday Night Fever, mood rings, ABBA. Gas lines, leisure suits, the New York City blackout, Star Wars and Son of Sam. Pet rocks, Howard Cosell and Telly Savalas hosting “Battle of the Network Stars.” And across the great pond over to England, the hot news was the Sex Pistols, punk rock, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, high inflation, unemployment, labor strikes … and a hit stage comedy that became an enormously popular television movie, Abigail’s Party.
I recently asked a British friend if he knew Abigail’s Party, a hilarious comedy that is fairly obscure in the U.S. “Of course,” he said, “every one in England knows Abigail’s Party. It’s so much a part of our culture.”
Indeed, since appearing in 1977, Abigail’s Party has become not just a cult classic of enduring popularity; it has become a cultural touchstone, shorthand for a garish middle-class 1970’s materialism, for polyester party dresses, and for a 1970’s style of suburban home decoration. There’s even a London bar named Abigail’s Party which serves cheese cubes and pineapple on toothpicks, a cocktail party favorite of the time.
Written by the independent filmmaker Mike Leigh, the play centers on Beverly, a cheerful yet bitchy party hostess. Leigh, director of the acclaimed movies Naked, Secrets and Lies, and Topsy-Turvy, is known for his months-long improvisational work with his actors in developing his scripts, including Abigail’s Party. His work is known for its depiction of the desperately small concerns of ordinary life.
Imagining herself to be the perfect party hostess, Beverly force-feeds drinks and cigarettes on her uneasy guests: Angela and Tony, a couple who have just moved in next door, and Susan, a middle-aged divorcee who has sought refuge from her teenage daughter’s wild party down the street. As the evening degenerates into drunken and caustic behavior, Beverly’s marriage to Laurence, an over-worked real estate agent, starts to unravel, with disastrous results.
Curiously, the play has remained obscure in the U.S. Though the characters are specifically British, they should not be unfamiliar to Americans. Underneath the play’s hilarity is a fascinating look at the fierce need to acquire material possessions as a means of masking domestic unhappiness. Some have referred to Abigail’s Party as the British version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for its biting and satiric look at marital relations and for its in vino veritas social humiliations.
Though Abigail’s Party takes place in that great year, 1977 – and though we may no longer wear leisure suits, listen to Jose Feliciano, and stare at lava lamps – the play’s humor and pathos are as fresh and relevant as if it had been written today.
Reviews of the London Productions:
“…an observant playgoer can derive a fascination even deeper than that of the play, which itself has the hypnotic quality said to be exerted by a rattlesnake…And what made the experience so extraordinary was that the spark that leaped between actors and audience was a recognition not of the characters’ unreal reality…but of the deep truth about them.”
- London Sunday Times, 1977
“It is a sardonic observation of life in a certain section of society and what is satirized is not the class of the characters but their pretentiousness and egotism. If these are not fair subjects for comedy then Aristophanes, Moliere and Jonson…have simply been wasting our time.”
- The Stage & Television Today, 1977
“…this ghastly party is set precisely in the Seventies in suburbia, but while it is a sharp and wickedly funny satire of the social pretensions…it also holds up a deeply unflattering but horribly truthful mirror to every one of us who has ever pretended to be posher, more sophisticated, more confident than we really are.”
- Mail on Sunday, 2002
“…both the writing and the acting are too funny and too sharp…they make for an unforgettable evening.”
- Sunday Telegraph, 2002
“The razor wire of class warfare lurks in every curl of the aimless conversation. This is a comedy with a slow burn.”
- London Sunday Times, 2002
“Leigh’s people make you laugh because of their ponderous banality, a banality masking unhappiness…a timeless comic delight.”
- Evening Standard, 2002
“What’s so clever about Leigh’s dialogue, is that despite the superficial level of conversation, the characters’ true colors just cannot help revealing themselves.”
- Independent on Sunday, 2002
“The laughter Leigh induces is not that of patronizing condescension but of recognition at his portrait of a suburban hell.”
- Guardian, 2002
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