ABIGAIL’S PARTY at the Theatre Royal Stratford East

★★★★

“the golden Outhwaite’s masterclass in subtle bitchery is unforgettable”

Mike Leigh’s 1977 biting social satire about a suburban drinks party which becomes horribly dark is a hugely popular modern classic, as witnessed by the man in the seat next to me reciting the play along with the cast. Apart from Leigh’s brilliant writing, another major reason for the popularity of Abigail’s Party was the iconic performance of Alison Steadman as Beverley, the party’s monstrous hostess, in the original production adapted for the BBC.

However, in Nadia Fall’s production, a mesmerising Tamzin Outhwaite makes Beverley her own. From the moment the curtain rises to Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby revealing Outhwaite on top of a glass-topped coffee table, dressed in a glittering, golden yellow kaftan and blue platform heels and strutting her stuff underneath disco lights, it’s clear that this is one hot hostess who is not afraid to use her sexual allure to manipulate.

Beverley is hosting drinks and nibbles for her new neighbours, gauche young nurse Angela (Ashna Rabheru) and her monosyllabic computer operator husband Tony (Omar Malik), plus stoic and sensible divorced Sue (Pandora Colin), whose daughter Abigail is having a teenage party at their home. Lawrence (Kevin Bishop), Beverley’s husband, pops in and out, being more devoted to his estate agent job at Wibley Webb than to his marriage. Given Beverley’s sneering, dismissive attitude towards him, you can’t blame him.

The initial party small-talk is excruciatingly embarrassing but hilarious; one new big laugh in the current production certainly wouldn’t have raised a smile in 1977 – Angela’s comment that they bought their house for £21,000. Beverley, naturally, is very keen to point out that it’s much smaller than her own abode, but this is far from where the sneering stops.

Beverley dishes out cigarettes from an onyx box, and drink after drink from a well-stocked cocktail cabinet, to her guests with almost the same gusto as she dishes out her barbed comments. She tells Angela that she’s wearing the wrong shade of lipstick; comments on Sue’s marital status, and constantly snipes at Lawrence. And as if that alone doesn’t make her soiree embarrassing, she is keen to impose her musical tastes on her guests – Demis Roussos and Elvis Presley.

It’s clear that Beverley has the hots for handsome ex-footballer Tony, and the drunker she gets, the more she pouts and flirts with him. Lawrence is clearly weary of this behaviour, and indeed anything she does, and Kevin Bishop portrays his pent-up rage perfectly, with subtle facial tics and a tension in his body that means he could go off at any moment. Abigail’s Party is certainly a comedy, but one which contains an incredible amount of tension which makes the audience gasp.

Peter McKintosh’s groovy set, with flowery graphic wallpaper, leather sofa and massive console unit containing the cocktail cabinet, record player and a fibre lamp which mesmerises Beverley, perfectly sums up the era’s taste. My one quibble was that the kitchen units were more noughties than Seventies, shiny and white with silver handles; they should have been as uniformly brown as the rest of the set.

The kitchen was the only wrong note in this excellent production, however. The ensemble are terrific, and the golden Outhwaite’s masterclass in subtle bitchery is unforgettable.