Stars: Alison Steadman, Tim Stern, Janine Duvitski, John Salthouse

Director: Mike Leigh

Summary: The story of a bored, bitchy hostess in this study of pretentious middle-class social manners.

Mike Leigh's television adaptation of the play performed by the Hampstead Theatre Production focuses on a dinner party organized by Beverly (Alison Steadman), a middle-class Londoner who is married to Laurence (Tim Stern). The party's guests include new neighbors Angela (Janine Duvitski), a nurse, and her computer programmer husband, Tony (John Salthouse), as well as Susan (Harriet Reynolds), a divorced single mother whose 15-year-old daughter, Abigail, is throwing her first party next door. As the guests arrive and begin to get settled in, they run through the generic list of get-to-know-you topics of discussion, including work, family, life, and the history of how they met their partners. Gradually, the alcohol takes effect, causing Beverly and Tony to see each other in a sexual light when they begin to slow dance. All of this is disrupted when Laurence short-circuits, first going on a rampage of art appreciation, and then falling to the ground in an apparent fit of choking. The gravity of the situation finally brings sobriety and a well-needed reality check to the situation as Beverly, Tony, and Angela struggle to keep Laurence alive. Shooting the film on video, using only one location, ABIGAIL'S PARTY captures the stage production with Leigh's usual intimacy.

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Originally screened as part of BBC's Play for Todayseries in 1977, Abigail's Partyis among Mike Leigh's most celebrated pieces, with his then-wife Alison Steadman appallingly brilliant as what Alan Bennett described as the "brutal hostess" at a ghastly suburban soiree. The Abigail of the title never appears--rather, the dull thud of her lively teenage party forms a distant backdrop (and contrast) to an excruciating evening of chilled red wine, olives and the music of Demis Roussos. Steadman plays the overbearing Beverley, an Amazonian mass of frustrated sensuality in a low-cut party frock. Tim Stern is her small, stressed estate-agent husband. The guests are Janice Duvitski as Angela, a nurse whose quite spectacular gormlessness shields her from the stilted social awkwardness quietly raging around her, John Salthouse as Tony, her taciturn husband and Harriet Reynolds as Sue, the gangly and miserably nervous mother of Abigail.

Rather than play for gags, Leigh and his actors mercilessly turn the screw of embarrassment through a series of too-true-to-life exchanges of dialogue, the stuff of all our collective worst memories of encounters with neighbours, aunts and office colleagues. Often misread as a satirical parade of suburban grotesques, Abigail's Partyprobes deeper than that, touching on nerves of anxiety and repression that throb behind the net curtains of modern England, culminating not in farce but tragedy. Decades on, Abigail's Partyis as psychologically true and close to home as ever--hard to bear but utterly brilliant.

On the DVD: Abigail's Partyis perfectly reproduced here in all its 1970s garishness. The one extra is a short featurette, focussing on Alison Steadman's playing of Beverley, with comments from the original actors in the TV series and Peter York marvelling at her "paint-scraping" voice. --David Stubbs

Aspect Ratio:	4:3
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Photo Gallery, Producer And Director Commentary, Abigails Party Night Welcome Intro And Goodbye
Year:	1977
Release Date:	May 26, 2003
Runtime:	102 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B B C D V D 1181
Keywords:	Party, Comedy, General, Tv, Drama, Abigail's
Genre:	Comedy