A lot has changed since the 1970s. It is in the era of quirky fashion that Abigail’s Party is set, which is as obvious as the kaftan worn by the lead, former Eastenders star Tamzin Outhwaite.
To explain the play is impossible without political context. The UK experienced economic growth during the preceding decade, the 1960s. the 1960s was seemingly a prosperous time for the British economy, with a near-uninterrupted growth of between 2 and 5 percent annually throughout. Some trickle-down economics had extended to some suburbs of Southern England, particularly around London, meaning an aspirational lower middle-class was forming, who started enjoying their money.
Abigail’s Party satires this subsect. It chronicles an attempt by the protagonist, Beverley, to host a dinner party. She and her husband Laurence invite over Angela, Tony and Sue, whose daughter Abigail is hosting a party for her friends.
Outhwaite’s Beverley is the embodiment of the oft-sexualised housewife in film, a la Stifler’s mom in American Pie – sexually frustrated, dissatisfied by her husband and unrelenting in her attempts to lure Tony.
Her henpecked estate agent husband, Laurence, is aloof. Computer operator Tony and nurse Angela are another couple are parodied as dim and less wealthy. Tony is basic, giving one-word answers. Sue represents a voice of reason. Unlike the other pretenders, she is actually middle class.
The message throughout Abigail’s Party was that the pretenders do not deserve or know how to be rich. Beverly is a monster set up for mockery, and the other characters are equally walking stereotypes, of unintelligent people to whom possession of money is a personality. It is a tirade, masked as a satire.
The real tragedy is that it empowers elitist values that society shockingly still has today. Investment banks, insurance and law firms have entry standards that effectively exclude the working-class from opportunities with them – and they are somehow allowed to get away with this. Far from the era of accessibility, breaking the class barrier has never been so difficult.
All the previous said, Outhwaite leads an affable performance of this play. She excels as a charmless host and perfectly encapsulates Beverly’s inner desires. Laurence’s comedically pathetic attempts to restore calm prove futile. It does manage to indulge in the droll excesses of the original, even if the audience reaction was over-enthusiastic. People who lived then have explained to me that writer Leigh shared a utopian dream of the time: a class-conscious togetherness. From a modern socialist perspective, it is astonishing that even 1970s socialists suggested that the elite deserved gatekeeping.
The audience is perhaps the crux of the statement. The play does not stand the test of time, nor does anyone there want it to. It is a shame that, at a time when cinematic standards have dropped so drastically, theatres are looking to rehash and repeat rather than innovate.
Furthermore, it is a derisory play with an open disdain for its characters. Leigh denounced Beverly in The Guardian as a “bully” and a “bundle of contradictions” who is “vulnerable, insecure and sad”. That she was written to represent the lower middle-class was to outcast them. The jokes and concepts within the play, along with Leigh’s views on class, should be as left behind as the 1970s.
