Showing @ King’s Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 02 Mar

Now famous for his successful film career, Lindsay Posner and Tom Attenborough go back to Mike Leigh’s roots directing his 1977 play Abigail’s Party. Beverly (Hannah Waterman) and Laurence (Martin Marquez) are hosting a small, informal gathering joined by new neighbours Angela (Katie Lightfoot) and Tony (Samuel James) and single mum Sue (Emily Raymond). Sue’s been kicked out of her house because her daughter Abigail is having her own party. Things start off okay but as the Gin and Tonics disappear, the character’s gracious exteriors become increasingly tested.

Like a beacon of hospitality, Waterman’s Beverly swans about the stage in her neon figure-hugging cocktail dress genially forcing drinks and nibbles on the unfortunate guests, her perennial question of ‘Everyone alright?’ basically rhetorical. Her strained marriage to Marquez’s reluctantly obedient Laurence and her feigned interest in anything other than Tony is reflected in the ‘leather look’ sofa and ‘silver plate’ candelabra of Mike Britton’s pungent brown and orange 70s furnishings. There’s a feel of Del Boy in Beverly’s ideas above her station, (Beaujolais pronunciation and subsequent deposit in fridge) and like Del, Beverly impresses a touch of “class” onto her life. It’s with Raymond’s prim and proper Sue that Leigh shows up Beverly as desperately putting on airs and graces and while their superficial politeness remains, the relationship between them gets rapidly irritated.

The script playfully depicts the teetering marriages; with James’ simple monosyllabic input offsetting Lightfoot’s wittering Angela, and Beverly and Laurence’s recognisably awkward arguments about music and very pointed speaking over one another. In the humorous but endearing comparison of lower and middle class life, Leigh creates a single factor with which Beverly can trump Sue; Abigail’s party. The shindig becomes a symbol of the crossover between them; as Beverly confidently describes what will happen there, she’s letting Sue know they’re not all that different as people. Whatever our social background, Leigh’s play marvels in its mockery of the very British sentiments of inflated self importance and passive aggressive politeness.

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