Abigail’s Party: Tamzin Outhwaite fills Alison Steadman’s shoes to perfection

The former EastEnders star makes the role of the fussy, proprietorial matriarch her own in this spirited revival of the Mike Leigh classic

4/5

Omar Malik, Ashna Rabheru, Tamzin Outhwaite and Pandora Colin in Abigail's Party at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East
Omar Malik, Ashna Rabheru, Tamzin Outhwaite and Pandora Colin in Abigail’s Party at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East Mark Senior

To the inevitable delight of many, national treasure Alison Steadman will be releasing her memoir early next month – and will be further in the public eye as the build-up begins to the final (Christmas) episode of Gavin & Stacey. Tamzin Outhwaite might be forgiven a sigh at the timing of this.

Just as she tackles the overbearing role of Beverly, who rules the roost in Abigail’s Party, it’s going to be even harder to escape comparisons with the actress who created the part in 1977 – and who, thanks to a Play for Today broadcast that year, became a household name and saw the character grow into an emblem of the Seventies’ social foibles and status anxieties.

Still, any revival benefits from our enduring affection for this comedy of suburban manners, scripted by Mike Leigh from actorly improv. As it approaches its half-century too, the work feels ripe for reassessment. Designed and dressed to period-mimicking perfection as it is, Nadia Fall’s superbly acted production combines familiar delight with fresh pertinence.

Outhwaite honours what we loved about Steadman’s turn while putting her own stamp on the role. As the Demis Roussos-devoted Beverly snips at her uptight estate-agent hubby Laurence and presides over the soirée from hell, the actress dominates the living-room, combining marital carping, proprietorial fussing and predatory manoeuvring. You register her veiled insecurities as the hostess visits discomfort upon the new neighbours (gormless Angela and monotone Tony) and the divorcee from up the road, Susan, whose teenage daughter’s bash gives the play its title and the evening its wistful sense of a carefree life happening elsewhere.

While fans will greet Bev’s conversational tics (“A little top-up” “Okay?” “Come through”, “…actually”) like old friends, they’ll also note that Ilford-born (and former EastEnders star) Outhwaite avoids any Steadman-esque imitation or hints of condescension: there’s no distinctive nasal delivery or overly twanging cockney accent. 

Now in her fifties, Outhwaite scrubs up nicely in an OTT flowing dress – like some would-be Greek goddess – and thereby transmits the anti-heroine’s materialist urges, fixation with appearance and a genuine sensuality that’s fatally neglected. At the start of each act, Fall showcases her as a disco queen, engulfed in haze and pulsing with desire to the unobtainable bliss of Donna Summer tracks.

Angela and Tony are, here, not just new neighbours but bashful Asian representatives of multicultural Britain – played, finely, by Ashna Rabheru and Omar Malik. Some lines sound sharper as a result – there’s a nastier edge to the talk of the area changing, Kevin Bishop’s dully conventional, hen-pecked Laurence seems more palpably threatened. But would an Asian bloke “in computers” have played for Crystal Palace or be quite so sniffy about Indian cuisine (a shuddered-at gastroenteritis episode notwithstanding)? Hmm.

These are quibbles, though. Not a beat or a look is misjudged, especially from Pandora Colin as the discreetly squirming, emetically squiffy Susan. At its vicious best, this feels like pre-Thatcher England’s answer to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and, unerringly attuned to the eternal battleground of the domestic, it looks as likely to stay the course as Albee’s masterpiece.


Until Oct 12. Tickets: stratfordeast.com