Review of Abigail's Party (1977) by Peter N — 11 Jun 2009

'Abigail's Party' is a terrifying time capsule of English suburbia in the 1970's. Whilst watching it I kept cringing in embarrassment as I noticed the furniture, rugs, and tacky paraphernalia of my childhood home held up for derision. And ultimately, that's the problem that I have with this play.

I fully support the idea of satirising the kind of lower-middle class selfish, delusional pretensions that Margaret Thatcher exploited with such horrible effectiveness. These people, ashamed and greedy, were so busy trying to hide their working class origins and fool their 'detached-house-with-two-bathrooms' neighbours that they were to the manor born, that they gladly turned a blind eye when Thatcher erased the shipyards and steelworks and mines from the English landscape. These people deserve all the criticism that can be thrown at them. Unfortunately, I feel that Mike Leigh goes about it the wrong way.

There's always something a little patronising, a little condescending, about Leigh's vision of the English working class. At the same time that we are invited to shed tears over the plights of his uneducated, uncultured anti-heroes, we're also invited to laugh at them and their bad taste and poor manners. Leigh always comes across as a well-meaning middle-class liberal who wants to somehow preserve a Victorian Socialist's idea of the nobility of the poor. And I'm just not buying it.

There is nothing inherently noble about being poor and uneducated. Similarly, there is nothing inherently funny about being poor and uneducated. Nor is there anything inherently bad about NOT wanting to be poor and uneducated. In 'Abigail's Party', the characters are, without doubt, loathsome and self-delusional individuals. But Leigh seems equally horrified by both the idea of the working class lifting themselves out of poverty, and any attempts made to access the symbols of education that have been denied them; from Shakespeare and Fine Art. A working class male showing an interest in art, however naively, should not be an inherently funny, outrageous, or contemptible idea, yet Leigh presents it as such.

The performances are universally sound, albeit caricatures, and Steadman's Beverley has become an icon of sorts. The obsessive minutiae of English class distinction, though requiring translation for any foreign audience, is a subject worthy of study, but Abigail's Party never fails to leave a bad taste in my mouth and makes me question Mike Leigh's delusional motivation as much as that of his characters.