Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh, Melbourne Theatre Company, Set Design by Anna Cordingley, Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo

Abstract

This research repositions a seminal work by UK director Mike Leigh, originally presented by Hampstead theatre in London and which was, in his words, 'the mother of all [Leigh's] studies of The Done Thing'. Here, Artistic Director of Little Ones Theatre and celebrated queer director Stephen Nicolazzo takes on the same text against the background of The Melbourne Theatre Company (another behemoth of The Done Thing) and tackles quite different, contemporary middle-class audience expectations. Abigail's Party then marked a tragi-comic moment in the pre-Thatcher UK. This work, to an Australian audience, asks how prevalent classism is in this country, and are we ourselves guilty of marking degr..