At the beginning of “Abigail’s Party,” Beverly enters the living room of her home, opens a cabinet full of liquor, and pours herself a drink, her first of what will be many this evening. She’s wearing a low cut, salmon colored dress and a large, garish gold necklace beneath a frumpy Pageboy haircut that’s rounded perfectly above her eyes. In the course of this evening, she will turn out to be a real monster. And that’s saying nothing of her friends.
In Beverly we get one of the most grating, annoying characters ever put to film, her British accent almost cartoonish, her poise sloppy and her decorum atrocious. And yet she’s the star of a truly devastating and cringe-worthy character study. “Abigail’s Party” was an early film by British director Mike Leigh released in 1977. It’s a teleplay made for TV and based on a theater production. Louis C.K. was inspired by it to make “Horace and Pete,” firstly due to its live, three-camera, sitcom style filmmaking, and secondly for how this darkly funny story of alcoholism, etiquette and societal values add up to a dreary tragedy.
Beverly (Alison Steadman) and her husband Laurence (Tim Stern) are having a small get-together at their house for their neighbors. He’s already arriving home late from work and Beverly isn’t happy that he’s got another errand that will take him away. He even forgot to pick up the beer (although it’ll go untouched with all the spirits they have), but that’s the least of this couple’s problems. Angela and Tony, a nurse and a former footballer, are the first to arrive, followed by the divorced Sue, who decides to get a night out while her 15-year-old daughter Abigail hosts a big party at their house down the block.
Beverly may be a monster, but Angela (Janine Duvitski) may be the most boring woman in England. She has a blocky, pale face and huge rectangular glasses under a long mess of brown hair. She either makes the worst small talk of miniscule details, like how the price of their home dropped from “22,000 to 21,000” because of leftover carpeting, or doesn’t know when her medical horror stories are grossly inappropriate. Tony (John Salthouse) meanwhile doesn’t even want to be here and delivers one-word answers with a glum, lifeless expression. That doesn’t stop Beverly from making eyes at him all evening.
As for Sue, from the moment she steps in the door, she feels preoccupied and regretful of coming. It’s a few moments before we learn why she’s nervous about her daughter, but it doesn’t take long for Beverly to treat Sue like a hostage. She declines a drink and food but caves after Beverly’s prodding, and she constantly allows Beverly to put words in her mouth, as though she was the one who wanted Laurence to go check on Abigail or as though it was Sue who prefers to listen to Tom Jones.
Leigh has the ability to lightly mock all of these people and slowly escalate the awkward tension in their marriage and their party relationship. While he has the ability to frame the whole room at once, he’ll often incorporate quick edits on dialogue into tense, prying close-ups on one individual. Leigh directs them to wear plastered-on smiles and speak in all overly friendly pleasantries. Steadman in particular gives a masterfully irritating performance as Beverly. Her voice sounds like it’s running through a phonograph, squeaky and up and down and constantly chattering. She punctuates each sentence with “yea” or “lovely,” as though her often insensitive comments were a friendly, innocent gesture. And the names! Beverly never stops using Sue or Angela’s names, always in the same tone of voice, always condescending. She’s like a Kirsten Wiig character.
Beverly is a caricature, but what makes her so painful to watch is we all know people who behave this way at parties, who don’t realize how rude, offensive or controlling their behavior has become, either with drinks or often times without any liquid assistance at all. When talking about Abigail, Beverly starts to give her two cents about today’s teenagers, but before long has Sue terrified that the party will easily get out of hand, that kids are sure to be drinking, and quite possibly that Abigail will be sexually promiscuous. In another scene, Beverly pesters and belittles Laurence just for asking if anyone would like a sandwich. He loses his cool and brandishes a knife right in front of her. He’s got a short fuse, but the women of the party act as though it couldn’t be funnier, as though it never even occurred to them that Laurence could be bothered.
To watch Leigh’s film is to appreciate it for its British charms and particularly English characters, but the story of “Abigail’s Party” is universal. It reveals how underlying marital problems can boil over and run wild and how seemingly innocent comments can have a monumental impact on others. It captures every social faux pas and annoying person you’ve ever had to speak to at a party and rolls them all into just a few characters. Those few characters are so extreme that watching “Abigail’s Party” can be excruciating, but it’s worth it if you have a few stiff drinks.