Stars: Daniel Peacock, Nick Berry, Caroline Quentin, Karl Howman, Gary Olsen, Kim Thomson

Director: Terry Windsor

Summary: It's New Year's Eve and Larry's parents are off to the vicarage dance totally unaware that their home is about to be the venue for the wildest party ever... Music soundtrack features tracks from numerous leading bands of the 80s, including Elvis Costello, Madness, Modern Romance, Bad Manners and Altered Images.

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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 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1983
Release Date:	August 22, 2005
Runtime:	93 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	823 293 6
Keywords:	Party, Comedy, General
Genre:	Comedy