Abigail’s Party
Theatre Royal Straford East
Tamsin Outhwaite as Beverly
Kevin Bishop as Laurence
Ashna Rabheru as Angela
September 2024
084 – Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
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Beverly and Laurence live in a suburb on the eastern outskirts of London. They are hosting a drinks party. ostensibly to welcome their new neighbours to the street, but also to show off their house, for Beverly is certainly house proud, having acquired the material accoutrements of the middle-class life she has aspired to. The evening does not pan out as planned, however. Under the carefully constructed social veneer, darker realities of Laurence and Beverly’s life together smolder and finally erupt in a shocking denouement.
This is the iconic 1970s period drama, Abigail’s Party, written by playwright and filmmaker Mike Leigh. The play’s portrait of Laurence and Beverly’s vain social pretensions is both hugely funny and excruciating to witness, as is the cruelty and despair that underly their behaviour. Leigh himself called the play a “tragi-comedy”.
Abigail’s Party was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre in London in April 1977, and then famously broadcast as a Play for Today on BBC1 later the same year, with Alison Steadman reprising her performance as the domineering, yet vulnerable, hostess, Beverly. The play has been a staple of amateur and professional theatre ever since, popularly renowned for its iconic snapshot of the material and social fabric of its time. As we record this episode a vibrant new production of the play is on stage at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, directed by the theatre’s Artistic Director, Nadia Fall.
I’m delighted to welcome Nadia to the podcast to talk us through this classic of British theatre.
Nadia Fall
Nadia Fall has been the Artistic Director at Stratford East for the past seven years, during which time her directing credits include Conor McPherson’s Shining City, The Village by April De Angelis, and King Hedley II by August Wilson with Lenny Henry, to name but a few. Previously she was an Associate Director at the National Theatre, where her productions included Inua Ellams African update of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Our Country’s Good, Dara and Chewing Gum Dreams, with Michaela Cole, as well as her own play, Home.
As from January 2025 Nadia will be the new Artistic Director of the Young Vic theatre in London.
Nadia recommended the plays of George Bernard Shaw.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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