Skip to main content

Abigail’s Party

Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Four Stars

It looks like someone is playing house when you look through the windows of the 1970s suburban des-res that forms the backdrop to what is arguably Mike Leigh’s most lauded play. It is a play as well that has come to define its very British age as well as much of what came after.

Behind the glass frontage of Janet Bird’s set in Sarah Esdaile’s touring revival, Jodie Prenger’s Beverly is queen of her semi-detached castle, an aspirational proto-Thatcherite who has elbowed her way to what she sees as the top with estate agent hubby Laurence in tow. In every dream home a heartache, alas, as the party she throws for newly moved in neighbours Angela and Tony plus next door divorcee Sue proves to disastrous effect.

There is something desperately Chekhovian about Leigh’s play, immortalised in the BBC’s defining TV version, but which forty years on is equally painful in its depiction of thwarted dreams. It would be easy to ham up its period bad taste, but really there’s no need. All the wrong-footed ambition of its era is summed up the moment she puts Sue’s bottle of Beaujolais in the fridge.

As Daniel Casey’s Laurence stresses himself towards a heart attack, you wonder how he and Beverly ever got together. The same applies to Vicky Binns’ ditzy Angela and Calum Callaghan’s mono-syllabic sociopath, Tony. Only Rose Keegan’s Sue seems different here, less put-upon, if made increasingly anxious by the sounds of the future coming through the walls. Behind these, her teenage daughter Abigail plays Ramones records while the place gets wrecked like a crimp-haired ancestor of a Skins party.

Dating from a time where you were considered old before you were thirty, Leigh’s play is a fascinating time-capsule of a historical period when social mobility was still possible, but which could so easily be as disastrous as a bottle of chilled Beaujolais. 

The Herald, February 5th 2019


Ends


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL