Abigail’s Party – Richmond Theatre review

Mike Leigh’s suburban soirée from hell still has the power to appall and delight, as Nadia Fall’s revival of Abigail’s Party shines with a central performance from Tamzin Outhwaite good enough to justify the ticket price alone

In 1970s Essex Beverly and her husband Laurence host new neighbours Angela and Tony for drinks, along with Sue from next door, whose teenage daughter Abigail is throwing the party of the title back at home. The gin flows, the small talk curdles, and the evening  descends into chaos.

A show like this lives or dies on its Beverly, and Outhwaite is superb. Her comedic timing is impeccable, and she brings a real biting nastiness to the role, needling, snobbish, and consistently vile to everyone in the room. The trick of the performance is that she is so funny you find yourself almost rooting for her anyway.

The supporting cast are all strong, each seeming to understand exactly the nuances of their role. Kevin Bishop’s Laurence, all nasal grievance and cultural pretension, comes close to justifying his wife’s vitriolic treatment of him. Lauren Patel is great as the chatty, eager to please Angela, bringing real charm and warmth to a character who never quite reads the room.

Omar Malik’s taciturn Tony and Pandora Colin’s quietly anxious Sue complete the party, both providing the stillness against which Beverly’s performance can rage. Peter McKintosh’s set, a lovingly detailed 1977 living room, is as much a character as the cast.

Fall’s production does not try to update the play too much. This is 1977 as written, cheese and pineapple sticks, Demis Roussos on the record player, and language you would not expect to hear on a stage today, including casual talk of rape, left intact. It jars, but that is the point. Sanding it down would blunt what Leigh was doing.

If anything, the play’s territory feels more current than ever. One of the films of the year so far is Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, in which a couple whose marriage is on the rocks invite the neighbours round for dinner and watch the night spiral, a premise Leigh got there with half a century earlier. Audiences, it turns out, still cannot get enough of watching a social evening go horribly wrong.

The Richmond crowd certainly could not. The house was fully engaged, laughing loudly throughout, the particular pleasure of an audience watching people be awful to each other from a safe distance.

Abigail’s Party plays at Richmond Theatre until July 25, you can purchase tickets here.