Abigail’s Party Reviews Round-up, starring Tamzin Outhwaite

"A brilliantly cast Tamzin Outhwaite plays hostess in this cleverly tweaked take on Mike Leigh’s immortal social satire"

"... Nadia Fall’s final show as Theatre Royal Stratford East artistic director (she’s off to run the Young Vic) manages to find a couple of clever new angles on ‘Abigail’s Party’ while playing to its long established strengths."

"Most obviously, Tamzin Outhwaite is superb casting as Beverly, the nightmarish hostess of a suburban dinner party on the ‘London side of Essex’."

"Outhwaite, on the other hand, is wickedly calculating, a middle aged mean girl who deftly manipulates her hapless guests as a means of making herself feel better about her rut of a life, in which a veneer of aspiration masks boredom and mundanity. She is just awful"

"The fact Outhwaite is actually from a working class Essex background surely helps: she doesn’t have Steadman’s weirdly affected drawl, but rather sounds like somebody with a regional accent trying to lose it – it’s less overtly amusing that Steadman but also less mocking of the character."

"Fall’s other innovation is to make Tony and his wife Angela (Ashna Rabheru) South Asian.... It doesn’t radically alter the play, but there’s now something of the condescending white liberal to Outhwaite’s admittedly very Tory-coded Beverly."

"Tamzin Outhwaite’s Beverley is mesmerising"

"As the antiheroine of Mike Leigh’s Seventies satire, revived at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, the actress provides a masterclass in how to put other people down"

"Fall has hardly tweaked Leigh’s tight piece except to cast two British Asian actors, Omar Malik and Ashna Rabheru, in the roles of Tony and Angela, a brilliant touch which instantly sharpens Laurence’s snide remarks about the increasingly “cosmopolitan” area."

"Outhwaite provides a masterclass in the tonal put-down, wielding people’s names like daggers, but for all her spite Beverley can’t escape who she is."

"Whip-smart and surprisingly energetic"

"Nadia Fall reinvigorates Mike Leigh’s classic play with a star turn from Tamzin Outhwaite"

"Nadia Fall’s swansong staging for Theatre Royal Stratford East (ahead of her taking over as artistic director of the Young Vic) doesn’t attempt to update the script or alter the setting, but there are plenty of innovations that invigorate the narrative. Our first glimpse of Tamzin Outhwaite as hostess Beverly is through the window of her detached new-build, where she dances under a glitter ball, surrounded by haze. The house, with all its mod cons, is Beverly’s stage and from the outset it’s clear that she intends to dominate it."

"Beverly’s vulnerability is carefully hidden behind the trappings of 1970s consumerism, but it gradually begins to show as she knocks back the gin, exposing an unfulfilled life and an unhappy marriage. Outhwaite’s is a big performance for the larger stage, revelling in Beverly’s confidence as an arch manipulator."

"Kevin Bishop breathes fresh life in to the role of Laurence, Beverly’s estate-agent husband, who flounders as he vainly attempts to assert himself as the man of the house."

"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"

"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."

"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."

"Not a beat or a look is misjudged, especially from Pandora Colin as the discreetly squirming, emetically squiffy Susan."

"Nadia Fall’s production, which marks her swansong as artistic director of Stratford East, is less a radical updating than a loving homage. It luxuriates in the 70s setting from the get-go, as we’re played pre-curtain bangers from the likes of Elton John and ABBA, before Tamzin Outhwaite’s Beverly appears boogieing under a disco ball to Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby”."

"There are flaws – notably, the ending doesn’t quite live up to the promise of what precedes it – and aspects of the text have inevitably dated, not least the use of the word ‘rape’ for cheap laughs. But Fall’s revival revels in its sheer entertainment factor, emphasised by Peter McKintosh’s sitcom-esque living room set, and in Outhwaite has a comic lead on stellar form."