6 - Losing Track of Who You Are: Abigail's Party

Summary

Many people are frustrated. … the greatest frustration comes from being unable to be yourself, from being forced to play the roles that society imposes on us.

–Mike Leigh

There have been two basic responses to Abigail's Party. The negative one is epitomized in Dennis Potter's comments in his London Sunday Times review of the original television broadcast. Potter argued that Leigh

diminished the characters … to a brilliant puppetry of surface observation. The thin wires of prejudice and superficial mimicry can nearly always be seen, tangled up with the words. What one gets is a portrait – and a very revealing one – of the social assumptions and insecurities of that peculiar group of people who earn their bread by acting. This play was based on nothing more edifying than rancid disdain, for it was a prolonged jeer, twitching with genuine hatred, about the dreadful suburban tastes of the dreadful lower middle classes. … A long tradition asserts that it is enjoyable to get on the other side of the dingdong doorbell in a new suburban villa and trample mud into the wall-to-wall carpets. Abigail's Party was horribly funny at times, stunningly acted and perfectly designed, but it sank under its own immense condescension. The force of the yelping derision became a single note of contempt, amplified into a relentless screech. […]