Abigail’s Party: Celebrating Suburbia

Omar Malik, Ashna Rabheru, Tamzin Outhwaite and Pandora Colin in Abigail’s Party, © Mark Senior

‘Abigail’s Party’ is a 1977 tragicomedy about suburbia, written by Mike Leigh. (An excellent production has recently been staged at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.)

Beverly: Don't you find shopping boring, though, Ang? Oh, I do - I hate it. He takes me down in the car, and I get me wheely, Tone, and I whizz in, and I grab anything I can see, and I bung it in me wheely, he writes me a cheque, we bung it in the car, bring it home, and it's done for the week, d’you know what I mean?

The drama opens with former beautician Beverly relaxing in her comfortable home at 13 Richmond Road (off Ravensway). She has been preparing to entertain her new neighbours: Angela, a nurse, and Tony, a former Crystal Palace footballer who now works in computers. On the onyx coffee-table she has arranged a tray of crisps and salted nuts, and a couple of cheese and pineapple hedgehogs. She pops her Cosmopolitan magazine in the rack, pours herself a gin-and-tonic, lights a cigarette and cues up Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ 

Angela: Were we meant to wear long?
Beverly: No, no, it’s just informal, you know, so…

When Angela and Tony arrive in their smart outfits, Beverly prompts her husband, overworked estate agent Laurence, to fix the drinks.

 Beverly: Tony would like Bacardi-and-Coke with ice and lemon, Angela would like a gin-and-tonic with ice and lemon, and I’d like a fill-up, okay?
Laurence: Surely.

 The group is completed by another neighbour, Sue, a long-term resident of the street, whose fifteen-year-old daughter Abigail is holding a party at home. 

The assembled guests admire the kitchen equipment, the fridge freezer and rotisserie; the living room furniture, fibre-optic lights and sheepskin rug. 

Beverly: What, the candelabra? Yes, it’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Angela: Yes. Is it real silver?
Beverly: Yeah. Silver plate, yeah.

They move on to discuss cars, foreign holidays and supermarkets. Tony and Angela shop at Sainsbury’s, but Laurence prefers the Co-op because ‘they have a much wider range of goods there.’ 

The class distinctions are subtle, but clear. Divorcee Sue speaks with a Home Counties accent, and her former husband was an architect. She arrives in a blouse and skirt, offering a bottle of Beaujolais and expecting dinner. But the other guests have already had their ‘tea,’ and have correctly anticipated an extended evening of drinks. Angela and Tony are working-class. (Beverly points out that their house is a little smaller than hers.) But they are keen to move up the ladder.

Angela: We’ve just bought a new three-piece suite, but ours isn’t real leather like this – it’s ‘leather look.’

Beverly’s working-class background is revealed by her occasionally coarse language and manners. But through money, property and hard work, she has acquired a certain social status. As Leigh observes of her: 

‘She is totally preoccupied with appearances and received notions of behaviour and taste. A bundle of contradictions, she espouses the idea of people freely enjoying themselves, yet endlessly bullies everybody into what she wrongly thinks they’ll enjoy, or what is good for them.’
Mike Leigh
 
There’s an ambivalence to social change here. On the one hand, the group embraces new freedoms. On the other hand, it seems inherently conservative.

Angela: I think more and more people are getting divorced these days, though.
Beverly: Yeah, definitely, Ang. Mind you, I blame a lot of it on Women’s Lib. I do. And on permissiveness, and all this wife-swapping business. Don’t you, Tone?
 
Through the course of the play, we realise that Beverly and Laurence are unhappily married. They are constantly bickering about mundane household matters; about Laurence placing his executive briefcase on the furniture; about stocking up on lagers and light ales, the appropriate music volume and the desirability of olives. They don’t seem to have much in common. Laurence is proud of his Van Gogh and Lowry prints, and his bound and embossed sets of Shakespeare and Dickens. He proposes they listen to some ‘light classical – just as background.’ James Galway perhaps. Beverly however has more popular tastes.

Beverly: Lawrence, Angela likes Demis Roussos, Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and Sue would like to hear Demis Roussos. So please, do you think we could have Demis Roussos on?

As the drink flows, Beverly begins to flirt with Tony. 

The play brilliantly captures the character of suburban life. The aspiration, materialism and conformity; the subtly calibrated hierarchies; the fear of boredom and the determination to have a good time. There is an underlying suspicion that the real fun is happening off-stage, at maverick teenager Abigail’s party.  
 
‘All my plays and films have, at one level or another, dealt with the tension between conforming or being your true self, between following the rules or breaking them, and with the problem of having to behave the way you think you’re expected to.’
Mike Leigh

‘Abigail’s Party’ also illustrates the central part that brands and consumer goods play in contemporary life; their critical role in marking achievement, belonging and identity. 

The first production of the work, starring Alison Steadman at the Hampstead Theatre, was a huge box office success, and a BBC ‘Play for Today’ version was immediately commissioned. (You can still find it online.) It certainly captured the zeitgeist. Leigh has observed that it distilled the post-war obsession with ‘the done thing’, which, combined with a new ‘aggressive consumerism’, ushered in the era of Margaret Thatcher. 

Still from the original 1977 BBC drama. Pictured L to R: Janine Duvitski, Alison Steadman, Tim Stern, Harriet Reynolds and John Salthouse

Some have criticised Leigh for his ‘disdain for the lower middle classes.’ But his characters are often vulnerable; always sympathetic.
 
‘The play is both a lamentation and a celebration of how we are, but it is not a sneer.’
Mike Leigh

I grew up in suburban Romford. A semi-detached world of mown front lawns, neat flower borders and pebble dashed houses; of shag-pile carpets, rattan furniture and swirly wallpaper; of hi-fidelity separates, LPs and easy listening; of Ford Escorts, Capris and Cortinas; of white socks and cut-down shoes, gold chains and pastel sweaters. I loved Essex, but I was never quite sure it loved me…

Angela: The trouble with old houses is they haven’t got any central heating.

I have often wondered whether suburbia is under-represented in modern media and advertising. Over half of the UK population lives in these outskirts and edgelands. And yet, with the exception of a few sit-coms, our national narrative seems generally to be played out in city apartments and tower blocks; in urban centres and on village greens. 
 
If we ignore the suburbs, we are failing to monitor the frontiers of social change; neglecting the true melting pot of modern mores and cultural values. We are missing out on a critical part of our collective identity.

Beverly: Laurence, we're not here to hold conversations, we are here to enjoy ourselves. And for your information, that racket happens to be the King of Rock’n’Roll.

'Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be the one,
That shines on me like the morning sun.
Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be my spring,
My rainbow's end and the song I sing.
Take me far beyond imagination,
You're my dream come true, my consolation.
Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be my dream
My symphony, my own lover's theme
Ever and ever, forever and ever, my destiny
Will follow you eternally.'

Demis Roussos, ‘Forever and Ever’ (S Vlavianos / R Costandinos)

Play for Today: The Answer To Your Future May Reside in Your Past

There were some advantages to growing up in the era before multi-channel TV. Lack of choice corralled you into regularly watching shows about inventions, astronomy, sheep dog trials and show jumping. Back then it seemed perfectly ordinary for a teenager to be sat at home following a snooker game in black and white, estimating the value of an antique chaise longue, guessing the identity of a musical piece played on a soundless keyboard. It was a kind of forced serendipity. In the absence of videogames and the internet, in the era of unheated bedrooms, there was nothing else to do. Sometimes a narrow diet broadens the mind.

My father and I particularly enjoyed watching a BBC series of one-off dramas, ‘Play for Today’. The pieces considered contemporary British life, and were written by the great dramatists of the time – people like Alan Bleasdale, Mike Leigh, Jack Rosenthal and Dennis Potter. ‘Play for Today’ was a window into other people’s worlds. ‘Bar Mitzvah Boy’ related the concerns of a Jewish lad growing up in North London; ‘The Black Stuff’ recounted the adventures of Liverpudlian tarmac layers during the recession; ‘Nuts in May’ told the tale of a nature-loving couple on a camping holiday.

‘Play for Today’ was not easy viewing. It consistently delivered arguments and upsets, temper tantrums and emotional outbursts. Here were families at war, relationships on the edge, jobs on the line.

One day, after a particularly eventful episode, I turned to my father and challenged him:

‘Look, Dad, I love ‘Play for Today’. But most people’s lives are really not this dramatic.’

As a suburban youth, growing up in a happy lower middle class home, I was under the impression that the majority of the population led rather ordinary, uncomplicated lives. I imagined my own unfolding in a simple and seamless way: go to university, get a job, get married, settle down, raise a family, take up gardening…

As I grew older I realised that life’s not like that. With every passing year you find that another illness or career dilemma, another financial challenge or brush with the law, another triumph or disaster, has affected your friends and family - and indeed yourself. Someone close has succumbed to teenage angst, twenty-something stress, a mid-life crisis, the softening of old age. Someone dear has been cursed by a tempestuous relationship, a torrid break-up; is haunted by missed opportunities, disappointed ambitions.

In truth most people’s lives could provide the material for their very own ‘Play for Today’. And indeed, as I reflect on my own childhood, it probably wasn’t so ordinary after all. It explains a good deal about who I am now.

 ‘Childhood is the bank balance of the writer.’
Graham Greene

It’s important to bear this in mind when considering your colleagues. You may regard them as robust, settled and steady. You may feel you’ve got a pretty good appreciation of what makes them tick. But, in my experience, individuals often conceal domestic concerns from the office. They often suppress anxieties, tensions and traumas that date back well before they arrived.

My old boss Nigel Bogle was a firm believer in brand archaeology pointing the way to future business success:

 ‘If you want to make a brand great again look at what made it great in the first place.’

I suspect this sentiment may be as true of people as it is of brands. If we know our colleagues’ personal narratives, their early struggles and experiences, we can better comprehend what motivates them and stands in their way; their enduring values and character. If we spend time properly listening to the dramas that propelled them through childhood, we’ll better understand the behaviour of their adult selves - and be better equipped to get the best out of them at work. The answer to our future often resides in our past.

So go on. Find a quiet moment, lean over to the person next to you, and gently enquire: 

‘Tell me about your childhood.’

'It's not a case of telling the truth.
Some lines just fit the situation.
Call me a liar,
You would anyway.

It's not a case of aiming to please.
You know you're always crying.
It's just your part
In the Play for Today.’

The Cure, 'Play for Today’ (L Tolhurst / M Hartley / R Smith / S Gallup)

No. 247