Abigail's Party

Thursday, 8 March 2012 - Saturday, 21 April 2012
Times : 15:30 - 17:30 20:00 - 22:30

Menier Chocolate Factory, 51-53 Southwark Street, Borough, SE1 1RU

How Much: £36.50 (Highest Price) , £16.50 (Lowest Price)

Although it's undeniably fun, I found it difficult to feel anything for Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party. It's one of his more commercial play full of genuinely funny moments but in Lindsay Posner's production the cast play their parts rather one-dimensionally making the show easily forgettable and the jokes easily predictable.

Leigh's comment on society is ever present as we watch two marriages implode in that heightened of settings, the neighbourly dinner party (sans dinner). Put-upon Angela (Natalie Casey) and her husband, the almost anti-social Tony (Joe Absolom), join flirty Beverly (Jill Halfpenny) and busy estate agent Laurence (Andy Nyman) for an evening of increasingly high-octane behaviour. As she talks and drinks relentlessly, waxing lyrical in her nasal way about her substandard cooking skills and love of Demis Roussaos, he yells about art, shopping at Co-op and the neighbourhood going to pot. The socio-political comments are either too blunt or too overshadowed by cartoon comedy and the entertainment is slow-burning as you'd expect with a Mike Leigh play.

Bev's take on sisterhood for example, feels too dated. Women still undermine each other but their tactics have moved on. That said, the relevance of Laurence's comment on multiculturalism is only heightened because of its vagueness and his neighbours inclination to dismiss it. Still, the comedy here is too clownish to warrant a return visit.  

Naima Khan