Abigail's Party

Best known as a television play from the seventies, Mike Leigh’s play started on the stage. The Brackley Players’ production reminded us of how Abigail’s Party can still resonate, 36 years after this very ‘seventies’ play made its debut in Hampstead.

In case you don’t know, the play is about a soiree held at the house of Laurence and Beverly. They have invited their neighbour Sue, who has, with some reluctance, chosen to make herself scarce while her teenage daughter Abigail holds a party, and newcomers to the street, Tony and Angela.

So far so ordinary – but the couples and Sue have never met before their get together so from the start there is a tension, constant and building in waves throughout the play.

Sue Arthurs played the controlling Beverly with the wheedling whine and queenly manner required. Central to everything that happens in the show – treating the other characters as her puppets –  Sue carried this part off with aplomb. Scott Saffrey played Laurence – a role he was still growing into when I saw the play on its first night, though I have no doubt his confidence grew over the run. I felt totally at ease with Lisa Saffrey’s portrayal of Angela, an unfulfilled and rather disappointed young woman increasingly drawn in by Beverly’s opinions and prejudices, becoming her partner in this dance macabre of a play. Tony was played well by Peter Milne, his monosyllabic responses giving more than a hint why his wife finds him such a disappointment. Susan would probably rather have stopped at home – for quite a few reasons – and Amanda Howson expressed her feelings (somewhere between detachment and distaste) with great empathy and finesse.

The set was an excellent evocation of the 70s – the G-Plan wall units (made by the company I think) were just what was needed. Well done too to the techies for their management of the music, especially the sounds from ‘next door’, giving us (and Susan) a worrying hint of what might have been going on.

Congratulations to Jim Howson and his team for such a good production of Abigail’s Party.

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