Beastly Beverly… the party host from Hell

REVIEW: Abigail’s Party – Malvern Theatres (Tuesday, June 16 to Saturday, June 20). Thursday and Saturday matinees 2.30pm.

Showtime! stars rating: *  *  *  *  *

MANY of us have been to parties like this hell hole. Two linger in my memory, and both involved heavily pregnant women whose husbands had been grabbed by clearly un-pregnant strangers and then subjected to bump and grind sessions as their fellow funsters watched in horror-struck silence.

Mercifully though, the frenzied gyrations next to the drinks table in each case were not to the accompaniment of Demis Roussos tracks. Probably Rod Stewart’s Do You Think I’m Sexy or some similar musical atrocity.

Anyway, witnessing these ghastly scenes, and observing the traumatised faces of the women about to pop, I remember thinking how unsisterly it was to inflict such behaviour on people who had never done you any harm…

Ever since Mike Leigh’s satire on the 1970s nouveau riche hurled a cluster bomb into suburban sensibilities, this has been a hard acting job to follow.

Yes, it is indeed a tough one. For who can forget Alison Steadman’s beastly Beverly, her nasal whine bouncing off the Laura Ashley wallpaper and that intoxicated, fag-smoking cockerel strut across the deep pile?

Well, all this week at Malvern, you will find that Tamzin Outhwaite is your hostess with the mostest when it comes to filling the wedge heels of the frightful Beverly, setting one’s teeth on edge far more effectively than the pineapple and cheese on sticks could ever do.

The setting is the mid-1970s, but it could also well be the present, if not more so. Frivolous superficiality, mindless materialism, dreadful taste in pop music, domestic décor that probably contravenes the noise abatement laws… get the picture? Yes, of course you do.

Director Nadia Fall has a talented cast at her disposal, and all five rise to the occasion, one that veers from mocking hilarity one moment and wincing awfulness the next.

Lauren Patel as Angela, wife of the monosyllabic Tony, is a scream in every sense of the word, the permanently hysterical counterpoint to the virtually mute and hapless Sue (Pandora Colin) who has fled her teenage daughter’s party to discover she has vacated the frying pan for the towering inferno next door.

I particularly warmed to Tony, played with brain-dead perfection by Omar Malik, the very personification of the party guest who wishes that they were simply anywhere else other than being in the presence of this dysfunctional nightmare and its array of oddballs.

And don’t you just ooze with compassion for the poor, put-upon Laurence (Kevin Bishop) a man who can only hope for peace in the next world – always assuming that Beverly won’t be joining him at some stage, that is.

But of course, there can be no dispute that the night belongs to the monstrous Beverly, who in the form of Ms Outhwaite has reactivated the electrodes powering Mike Leigh’s Frankenstein and brought her shockingly back to life.

Nearly 50 years on from its original television screening, Abigail’s Party has lost none of its power and is most surely this week’s must-see event. Firmly – and probably also a tad horrifically – recommended.