Mike Leigh’s cult-classic comedy has returned in a co-production between ETT, Northern Stage, Rose Theatre, and Colchester Mercury Theatre.
Now touring, director Jack Bradfield, winner of the prestigious RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award, brings a fresh new perspective to Leigh’s ground-breaking play which garnered cult status following the 1977 BBC TV Play for Today starring Alison Steadman.
It has received glowing reviews including praise Leander Deeny’s performance as Laurence, who the Guardian described as “a man so stressed we see his heart attack coming the moment he gets home.”
With the production currently playing in Colchester, we caught up with Deeny before it sets off again to Blackpool and Kingston upon Thames.
Q&A with Leander Deeny
What can you tell us about this new production of Abigail’s Party?
Abigail’s Party was originally based on improvisations by the cast – which makes it sort of bonkers that the script now stands as a classic in its own right, full of mysteries, unspoken truths, and buried secrets for each new company to discover afresh. Our production is darker than the original in many ways, but gentler in others, simultaneously more repressed and more unhinged – the laughs erupt out of surprising and different places, some crueller, some kinder – but all of them emerging out of the same hauntingly dreadful cocktail party one night in suburban Esse
How aware were you of the play before you joined the production?
I’d seen the TV version – which I adore, but I know Mike Leigh and the cast felt it didn’t quite capture the richness of the stage show. I was thunderstruck when I sat down and read the script – by its endless blind allies and unanswered questions. Like all the best fiction it is somehow more than the sum of its parts.
Can you tell us about your character, Laurence, and how you’ve approached the role?
Lawrence Moss is an estate agent in Essex in the late 70s and his most treasured possessions are his Mini, his moustache, a gold embossed set of the complete works of Dickens, and a print of Van Gogh’s chair which fills him with feelings he cannot explain. I started out wanting to develop a confident persona for him, a kind of mask or front that he presents to the world of a sophisticated scotch-drinking man, but during rehearsals I ended up feeling that his love for Beverley is so helplessly all-consuming that he never quite manages to put up any sort of defence at all.
You’re currently on tour, what has the experience been like so far?
So, so wonderful – this country is simply full of fantastic venues working every day in difficult circumstances to provide the public with places of sanctuary and excitement, reflection and delirium, carnival and comfort. I like chatting to all the people who shelter in the theatre café during the day as much as I enjoy the audience in the evening. We’ve been made very welcome at Northern Stage and The Colchester Mercury, both of which are fab, and I’m looking forward to the Blackpool Grand and The Rose, Kingston.
What has the reaction from audiences been like?
Superb and very varied – some people laugh their heads off at the very worst bits, some are in tears by the end. It’s not supposed to involve audience participation but we did get some helpful advice from a few audience members one matinee, mostly about who we should be in love with and why we shouldn’t be smoking so much.
