Abigail’s Party at Stratford East – review

Abigail’s Party is having a moment. With two major revivals running concurrently, it’s clear that Mike Leigh’s landmark 1977 portrait of suburbia in meltdown is hitting nerves with a new generation.

Nadia Fall’s production, which marks her swansong as artistic director of Stratford East, is less a radical updating than a loving homage. It luxuriates in the 70s setting from the get-go, as we’re played pre-curtain bangers from the likes of Elton John and ABBA, before Tamzin Outhwaite’s Beverly appears boogieing under a disco ball to Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby”.

This very much sets the tone, with Outhwaite seemingly having the time of her life as modern drama’s ultimate hostess with the mostest. Her waspish put-downs grow ever more outrageous as she goads her guests – and her estate agent husband, Laurence (a superbly strait-laced Kevin Bishop) – while chain-smoking fags, main-lining gin and tonics and dancing to Demis Roussos in her platform heels.

But beneath the outlandishness what also comes across here is her nihilism, perhaps driven by depression (she openly admits to being bored in her marriage), which manifests as a determination to drag all those around her down with her. She endlessly needles and picks at their sores. When the wonderfully buttoned-up Susan (Pandora Colin) – a divorcee whose daughter Abigail’s raucous teenage party is happening within earshot – finally tells Beverly to shut up, she gets a round of applause.

Though the cheese and pineapple hedgehog may seem a nostalgic relic, the class tensions are anything but. The way that Beverly and Laurence patronise their new neighbours Angela (Ashna Rabheru – whose dance moves are a standout moment), a peppy nurse, and Tony (Omar Malik), a plain-speaking former footballer, ring just as true today as London’s suburbs gentrify apace. The house prices may have evolved, but the underlying obsession with property equating to status has not.

There are flaws – notably, the ending doesn’t quite live up to the promise of what precedes it – and aspects of the text have inevitably dated, not least the use of the word ‘rape’ for cheap laughs. But Fall’s revival revels in its sheer entertainment factor, emphasised by Peter McKintosh’s sitcom-esque living room set, and in Outhwaite has a comic lead on stellar form.