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Concept
Abigail's Party
Summary
Abigail's Party is a play for stage and television, devised and directed in 1977 by Mike Leigh. It is a suburban situation comedy of manners, and a satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new middle class that emerged in Britain in the 1970s. The play developed in lengthy improvisations during which Mike Leigh explored the characters with the actors, but did not always reveal the incidents that would occur during the play. The production opened in April 1977 at the Hampstead Theatre, and returned after its initial run in the summer of 1977, for 104 performances in all. A recording was arranged at the BBC as a Play for Today, produced by Margaret Matheson for BBC Scotland and transmitted in November 1977.
The stage play was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre on 18 April 1977, enjoying great success, leading to a revival over the summer of that year, which was another sellout.
The television version was abridged from over two hours to 104 minutes; the record played by Beverly in the original stage production was "Light My Fire" by José Feliciano and in the TV production it was the 1976 hit "Forever and Ever" by Demis Roussos – Leigh had to replace nearly all the music with artists recorded on British labels, for copyright reasons, in case the BBC sold the play to the United States. As José Feliciano became Demis Roussos, so Elvis Presley gave way to Tom Jones. Other music used in the BBC production included "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer (sung here by Clare Torry) and a piece of library music by Robert Farnon entitled "Blue Theme".
The BBC version was a film of a play, rather than a film in its own right, about which Leigh commented:
The first thing I’d say is, this is not a film. And not only that: for a film-maker, it’s a work of deep embarrassment and pain. There is no piece of work for which I have been responsible as director by which I’m embarrassed, apart from Abigail’s Party. Not for the play or its content [...] It is a stage play that was wheeled into a television studio.
Official source
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