Abigail's Party

Watching Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party is like jumping into the past in the Seventies, when the play takes place. It's about a supposedly enjoyable party that soon becomes a hilarious and tragic disaster. And all is due to the ambition of being part of the middle class. The play is a portrait of people of that time, but nonetheless its themes are really up-to-date. For example, everything and everyone must be at Beverly's command so you can guess that it is unsafe to be victims of the desires of people like the cold-hearted Beverly, because events could take the wrong turn. This charming film is blessed with very talented actors who develop very peculiar characters. I really recommend it because it is clever thanks to the analysis of social reality and at the same time you can enjoy yourself with a good laugh.

Mike Leigh's jet black comedy of manners shouldn't be reviewed as a film; strictly speaking, it's a video document of his own stage play, performed as theater. The play itself is an often brilliant one-act satire, charting the total disintegration of an intimate cocktail party controlled by an aggressively bourgeois hostess (Alison Steadman) and her ineffective husband. The escalating tensions between each guest (one of them exiled from her daughter Abigail's punk rock party, heard but never seen offstage) suggest a clever parody of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', blending acute social embarrassment with moments of absurd but often hilarious tragedy. Middle class envy and pretensions have rarely been savaged with such glee, and on a purely technical level it offers a fine example of how to film a play as a play, with the camera intruding only far enough onto the stage to capture every nuance of the performances.

The best bit (for me) is when Beverley is putting on Donna Summer's "Love to Love You" and fixing herself a drink at the beginning of the play. She puts the needle on the record and at the same time she opens the drinks cabinet's sliding door directly above her head with her spare hand in a smooth, perfectly performed robotic motion. She then sits to consume her drink and, with the look of a Basilisk, surveys her domain. It is her appearance which really startles. Her red dress is of the finest polyester, but exposes her flesh in unflattering ways. She sometimes looks like a jellyfish, with the tendrils flapping away, or like some monster who has made a dress out of the leftover bits of red meat of her victims. Either way, you are in no doubt that Beverley is the hostess with the mostest. You know you are in for trouble when her husband Lawrence comes in and she pipes up "Hi". It's done in such a dissatisfied, unloving way, that you can see she's going to kill him one way or another.

I reckon that this is the sort of movie that gets film students all excited. There are so many levels to this flick that you could probably go on for days pulling apart and examining the different characters, relationships and commentaries. But I recommend you watch this film purely for entertainment purposes - it's great. The actors are believable, the story is simplistic (yet so effective) and the period touches are great - because this is essentialy a period drama (the period being very firmly in the 1970s). For a film to have such little plot yet remain so compelling is testament to each and every element that makes up this movie. Watch it.

Abigail's party is a tremendous piece of drama that was originally developed through a process of improvisation. It is hilariously funny but at the same time deeply moving and the tension created on stage is amongst the most painful I have ever witnessed. Mike Leigh, as a director, clearly has an amazing ability to achieve fantastic performances from his actors. The play, about an awkward drinks gathering, hosted by the atrocious Beverley (Alison Steadman), explores the intricacies of the social order in Britain and the pretentious aspirations of the lower middle class. With a heavy dose of Demis Rusoss, quite a few Gin an' Tonics, a cheesy pineapple stick and a dramatic climax - Abigail's Party is a much-watch. It may be a little dated but it still has a cult following and I hear that people today hold Abigail's Party parties:- So it must be good!