Abigail's Party (1977, Mike Leigh) (Patreon)

50/100

Barely even attempts to disguise its theatrical origin (to Leigh's subsequent disgust, despite this reportedly being among the most beloved BBC broadcasts of all time), though the titular conceit—teenage Abigail, never seen, is throwing her party next door, with loud music bleeding through thin walls as a perpetual raucous generation-gap backdrop—works surprisingly well in a recorded format. Even fans concede the overwhelming staginess and '70s-video ugliness, which can no doubt be tolerated if you consider this a terrific play...and it certainly has the contours of a terrific play, providing a showcase for five strong actors to inhabit memorable comic caricatures in prolonged awkward casual prattle. To my mind, though, Abigail's Party pretty much exhausts itself within half an hour, hammering home the same class-centric satirical points with precious little variation. That approach admittedly does have its merits, e.g. each indifferent, monosyllabic reaction from John Salthouse's Tony seems even funnier than the last (facilitated by the purely functional editing scheme, which mostly just cuts to the person speaking for the precise duration of his/her line; this mostly looks amateurish, but its bluntness complements that particular character). Susan's assortment of uncomfortable grimaces and Laurence's various pushy efforts at erudition, on the other hand, start to feel excessively cruel after a while. As previously noted, this is a recurring issue that I have with Leigh, usually confined to small supporting roles (Career Girls is a rare "mature" Leigh work with over-the-top leads, and consequently not a favorite of mine); here, it's the entire ensemble, which would be doomed to eternal mortification had Leigh not, in apparent desperation, devised an unexpectedly grim means of shutting everyone up. One need only look at Life Is Sweet to see what a difference it makes when Leigh pushes his actors beyond superficial grotesquerie—Alison Steadman's Wendy starts out looking much like her aggressively blinkered Beverly in Abigail's, with some of the same grating cheery mannerisms, but gradually becomes a complex, recognizable human being by movie's end. Also that is a film, and this is a play performed for a camera instead of an audience.