The Menier Chocolate Factory is delighted to announce the revival of Mike Leigh's acclaimed play, Abigail's Party. From the award-winning writer and director comes some of his best loved characters in this "brilliant and hilarious play" - Daily Telegraph.
In 1970s suburbia, Beverly and her husband Laurence are hosting a drinks party for their neighbours. There is plenty of alcohol, an array of cheese-pineapple savoury bites and olives, and Demis Roussos on the record player. But as prejudices are unmasked and tempers flare, the evening seems headed for disaster...
Mike Leigh's classic comedy is directed by Lindsay Posner, who recently directed Noises Off at the Old Vic. Other credits include: Butley (Duchess), A View from the Bridge (Duke of York's - Olivier nomination) and Fiddler on the Roof (Savoy - Olivier nomination).
The role of the infamous Beverly will be played by Jill Halfpenny, who won both the Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Awards in 2011 for her role as Paulette in Legally Blonde (Savoy). Jill is also well known for her TV roles on EastEnders, Wate rloo Road and Blue Murder.
The play, now considered a modern classic, sees Beverly (Jill Halfpenny) and her husband Laurence (Andy Nyman) host a drinks party for their neighbours in 1970s suburbia. As prejudices are unmasked and tempers flare, the evening can only end in disaster.
It plays a limited eight week season at the Menier until 21 April 2012, before heading to the Theatre Royal Bath between 23-28 April, with a cast that includes Joe Absolom, Natalie Casey and Susannah Harker.
"Like Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends, Mike Leigh's best-loved play shows the undercurrents of misogyny and material aspiration ... Leigh’s play ... is by far the superior, achieving all that Absent Friends manages (and more) with none of the artifice ... One now realises that Sue ... is the lynchpin of the play’s continued success. Her plummy presence (Susannah Harker) ... ensures the brash tastes of her horrific hostess Beverley Jill Halfpenny) remain rooted in class, not just the mockable gaucheness of the period ... Lindsay Posner ’s production thrives in the Menier’s intimate surrounds ... It allows everything to exist in the details, whether of Mike Britton ’s intricately ghastly set or the fine-tuned performances of a cast treating plum roles with both relish and respect. Halfpenny borrows the needling nasals and lashing lisps of Alison Steadman’s original, but her Beverley is a more determinedly glamorous creature ... Andy Nyman is fantastic as her husband ... Posner gives us all we want ... but still finds the surprise punch to silence our laughter. He controls fraying tempers and momentary outbursts with a conductor’s sensitivity and confirms – if further proof were needed – Abigail’s Party as a truly modern classic."
"Lindsay Posner's vibrant, splendidly cast revival of Abigail's Party ...Mike Leigh's stage play... a classic of excruciatingly comic social embarrassment ... Posner's production will delight the fans ... invigoratingly fresh new sidelights on characterisation ... Halfpenny pins down with hilarious precision the infallibly undermining supportiveness of Beverly ... But whereas (Alison) Steadman's Beverly seemed like this by second nature, you are more aware here of how the control freakery is compensation for a marriage that failed ... By intriguing coincidence, there's another play on at the moment, set in the 1970s and dealing with unlovely male attitudes to women and gifted with a set that is a shrine to the hideous idea of domestic taste in the period. But Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends strikes me as strenuously (and slightly self-regardingly) feminist by comparison with Leigh's play which takes huge, calculated risks in being misconstrued as heartless and patronising about the class-conflicted characters whose idiosyncrasies are here revelled in unwitheringly by Susannah Harker, Natalie Casey and Joe Absolom."
"A tragicomic portrait of the hostile hostess, outwardly all gins, small-talk and cheesy nibbles; inwardly tortured, sadistic ... Jill Halfpenny’s Beverly certainly looks alluring, all done up in a long, green, slinky dress, with eyelashes like ravens’ claws ... Miss Halfpenny has the unenviable task of escaping the memory most of us have of Alison Steadman in this role. She succeeds ... That cracking actress Natalie Casey de-glams herself to play plain plodder Angela. Susannah Harker, once so willowy, is a revelation as posh, matronly hipped Susan, mother of Abigail. Susan is a loser. Miss Harker catches beautifully her air of fatigued failure ... Joe Absolom ... completes the strong cast ... The one trouble with Abigail’s Party is that so many people know it so well that it has lost the power to surprise. But this is a jolly good production of a great play." [W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/AbigailsParty360_2012.jpg#360#240#The cast of Abigail's Party at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.[/W@S_IMG]
"A night of continuous guilty pleasure ... It is also a piece that divides critical opinion. While many find it a hoot, others have complained that it cruelly holds its lower-middle-class characters up to derision ... Indeed I took that view myself when the play was last revived in the West End 10 years ago. This time, however, I was completely won over ... Lindsay Posner’s superb production captures the palpable pain of the characters as well as their absurdity ... Mike Britton’s brilliantly evocative Seventies stage design ... Beverly, brilliantly played by Jill Halfpenny in a performance that is simultaneously sexy and repellent ... But the actress leaves no doubt that deep down Bev is miserable and unfulfilled ... Natalie Casey, with her pendulous lower lip, proves deeply poignant as the gauche and simple-minded nurse Angela ... Terrific work, too, from Andy Nyman ... and from Susannah Harker as the posh, unhappy neighbour ... The play’s dark ending still achieves a shattering dramatic impact, even if you know it is coming, and this terrific production must surely be bound for the West End."
"In Lindsay Posner’s exemplary revival the role belongs to Jill Halfpenny ... her performance is finely tuned, even if it can’t eclipse Steadman’s masterclass in nasal ghastliness ... Halfpenny’s Beverly is ... a magnificently monstrous creation, dominating those around her with her endless display of synthetic gestures, attitudes and phrases ... Andy Nyman is splendidly fidgety, moving from a hollow geniality into irritable self-importance. Susannah Harker is spot-on as the simpering, repressed Susan. Joe Absolom’s laconic Tony resembles a spring waiting to uncoil, and Natalie Casey’s Angela is a perfect study in chatty monotony. The interplay between the performers is impeccably managed. Posner has a skillful way with farce, yet also extracts pathos from Leigh’s writing ... Leigh’s play will always strike some as a heartless and patronising caricature of pretentious suburbanism. But here it seems triumphantly witty - not so much a cheesy nibble as a fizzing mix of acute humour and slowly revealed tragedy. Rather than being a guilty pleasure steeped in Schadenfreude, it feels universal in its appeal."
"Jill Halfpenny, stepping into Beverly's heels in this hugely enjoyable revival...also gives her a sultry sexiness and some seriously seductive dance-floor moves that I don't recall from the original ... Director Lindsay Posner has assembled a flawless cast for Beverly to spar with. Joe Absolom is a glowering, dangerous Tony, while Natalie Casey plays his dim wife Angie with a compelling deadpan drone. A tense Susannah Harker bears the lonely burden of Sue's cut-above politeness, cringing at the ghastliness but too polite to resist. And Andy Nyman brings a skilful blend of geniality, charm and ugly suppressed rage ... Designer Mike Britton has had enormous fun with the set ... Beverly, with her boorish insistence on taking control and forcing everyone else to want what she wants, is as vivid a gorgon as ever."
It wasn’t all cheesy-pineapples and fibre-lights in the 1970s. Like Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends, Mike Leigh’s best-loved play shows the undercurrents of misogyny and material aspiration swirling beneath the era’s gauche surface.
Leigh’s play, still a cultural marker thanks to the BBC film version, is by far the superior, achieving all that Absent Friends manages (and more) with none of the artifice. Where Ayckbourn needs the kick-start of a drowned fiancée, Leigh requires only the sort of teenage house party that pierces some suburb’s peace every weekend. The fallout is entirely driven by his unrivalled grasp of character.
One now realises that Sue, the middle-class mother taking refuge from that party with her nouveau riche neighbours, is the lynchpin of the play’s continued success.
Her plummy presence – Susannah Harker’s thank-yous are like the polite ding-dong of suburban doorbells – ensures the brash tastes of her horrific hostess Beverley (Jill Halfpenny) remain rooted in class, not just the mockable gaucheness of the period. She looks down on Bev and her husband Laurence, just as they look down on new neighbours Tony and Susan, with their smaller house and two jobs. Abigail’s Party shows the working-class suburban invasion, recalled by David Eldridge’s In Basildon, in mid-flow, so that the self-made find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with old-pros and CEOs. Under the fixed smiles and forced niceties are values as clashing as the prawn and baby-shit wallpaper, and Bev’s soiree soon becomes a hostage situation.[W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/AbigailsParty360_2012.jpg#360#240#The cast of Abigail's Party at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.[/W@S_IMG]
Lindsay Posner’s production thrives in the Menier’s intimate surrounds. We’re so close that the sickly vanilla of Beverley’s Estee Lauder perfume rolls across the auditorium like poison gas. It allows everything to exist in the details, whether of Mike Britton’s intricately ghastly set or the fine-tuned performances of a cast treating plum roles with both relish and respect.
Halfpenny borrows the needling nasals and lashing lisps of Alison Steadman’s original, but her Beverley is a more determinedly glamorous creature. In a glaring lime maxi-dress, dolled-up to the nines, she looks like the Angel that Charlie forgot to call.
Andy Nyman is fantastic as her husband, deep-breathing his way through the emasculating humiliation of his wife’s overt flirtation with Tony (Joe Absolom), while Harker looks like she’s distantly imagining the stains waiting for her at home. Natalie Casey strays furthest from the original, but her lobotomised goat-herd twist on Susan is perfectly in keeping with the role, while wringing more laughter from it.
Posner gives us all we want, from Demis Roussos to chilled Beaujolais, but still finds the surprise punch to silence our laughter. He controls fraying tempers and momentary outbursts with a conductor’s sensitivity and confirms – if further proof were needed – Abigail’s Party as a truly modern classic.
Loved it..I'm a 67 year old female and went with my 27 year old son--he loved it too! Ageless and very funny from all angles. All actors superb....would love to see it again, but all seats sold out....bring it back!!! - Janet
12 Apr 12
The set of Abigail’s Party plays a crucial role in this production, for as the audience take our seats in the intimate space that is the Menier, we are confronted with this living room from the 70’s – all browns and oranges, immediately drawing us in to this horrendous party, before it even begins, with its endlessly flowing alcohol, cheese on sticks and Demis Roussos records.
As Beverley, Jill Halfpenny does not quite achieve the same out and out vicious forcefulness of those who’ve preceded her in the role. Where she does particularly excel is in the flirtatious scenes with Joe Absololm’s Tony where she lays on the sexual allure with a trowel. Tony as played by Absolom captures the frustrations and aggressiveness of Tony’s character. As Laurence, Andy Nyman leaves you wanting to feel sympathy yet ending up frustrated by his ineptitude. Susannah Harker’s Sue is so hopelessly grey and soft that she offers no redeeming qualities whilst Natalie Casey steals the show with her fabulous portrayal of Angela, the nurse who dresses and speaks like someone so gormless and naïve about life that you want to shake her. Her Angela is both funny and touching and by the end is the one true survivor of the piece and the only character that makes you want to care about them.
As a friend said to me, Abigail’s Party is like watching a car crash. It certainly is and in this production it’s done in a wonderfully awful and compelling way.
- Paul Wallis
09 Apr 12
This is terrific. Natalie Casey's Angela is reason enough to see this, and good justification for putting new flesh on the bones of an old classic. Casey is comic excellence, her dumb innocence and uncomplaining victimhood played with a straightfaced gormlessness that is hysterically funny. Jill Halfpenny's bitter and twisted uber-glam Beverley is an equally wonderful creation, and in combination with Casey's Angela, they form a formidable comic double act. God help those in their firing line: Sue (a prevaricating and prissy Susannah Harker) and Laurence (Andy Nyman more tightly wound than Basil Fawlty) may be horrendous snobs, but they really have no chance against Beverley and Angela. Only Joe Absalom's monosyllabic thug Tony holds his own against them by virtue of his good looks and violent bearing. As a study of how horrible relationships can be, and how nastily people can treat each other, this play is prescient. And when Angela finally stands up to Beverley, that is unforgettable! - steveatplays
24 Mar 12
I loved it. Jill Halfpenny is very funny. - PJ
19 Mar 12
One might have expected this 35-year old Mike Leigh play to have aged, but surprisingly it seems to have matured – with 70′s nostalgia and retro style now an added bonus!
Given millions have seen the TV version, it probably needs little by means of description. Beverly & Laurence have invited new neighbours Angela & Tony around for drinks and nibbles (cheese and pineapple, obviously, as this is 1977). They’ve also invited a more long-serving neighbour Susan, who’s teenage daughter Abigail (subject of the play’s title, but an offstage character) is throwing a party in her home. A lot is drunk, Beverly nags Laurence mercilessly and flirts with shy Tony and Susan frets. Abigail’s party gets out of hand, as does Beverly’s as it moves to its tragi-comic conclusion.
Though still dark, this production seems much funnier. Perhaps familiarity has meant we are less shocked and more prepared to laugh out loud as grotesque Beverly’s hospitality morphs into control, Laurence’s drive becomes his downfall, Tony reveals a darkness beneath his nerdiness, dull Angela proves to be the only one who’s useful when it comes to the crunch and frumpy Susan eventually fights back. It really is deliciously laugh-out-loud funny with an equal measure of cringe-making moments, all impeccably staged by Lindsay Posner (also proving a master of comedy with the current Noises Off revival) on a brilliant period set from Mike Britton – all shades of brown, orange and beige, G-Plan shelf units and leather sofas.
Alison Steadman’s iconic characterisation is a hard act to follow, but Jill Halfpenny’s Beverly is subtly different whilst retaining the essence of the icon; she commands the stage as she does her soiree. Andy Nyman is the perfect foil, his sniping moving to rage as his wife’s put-downs become more open and more outrageous. Joe Absolom’s controlled performance as Tony means his eruptions shake the theatre when they come. Some have said that Natalie Casey is the weak link in the casting but I was pleasantly surprised by her interpretation of Angela. Susannah Harker’s role is in many ways the toughest, but hers too is a beautifully judged performance.
It’s great to see the Menier back on form, packed to the rafters and awash with laughter. I’d be surprised if this isn’t another West End transfer for this lovely powerhouse in Southwark. - Gareth James
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