BARBARA HODGSON talks to Hannah Waterman who’s up to new tricks as the star of Abigail’s Party
THE invitations are out as Newcastle gets ready to host Abigail’s Party and who wouldn’t want to be there? – even though we know how excruciating it will be.
Mike Leigh’s dark comedy classic, set in seventies suburbia, has proved a once-seen never-forgotten experience for anyone who watched Alison Steadman ply guests with drinks and olives as monstrous party host Beverly.
Steadman first played the 1977 play’s star at London’s Hampstead Theatre in spring that year but it was in recreating the role for TV a few months later that Beverly gained her national status.
From our sofas we watched them on theirs in the BBC’s Play for Today, as the pretentious hostess strives to impress guests with her taste in art and Demis Roussos records, only to see her drinks party disintegrate amid alcohol-fuelled rows into disaster.
Full of social faux-pas and awkward pauses, it’s all toe-curlingly embarrassing. Which is, of course, why we laugh so much.
“We go ‘we are not like that!’ If we were like that, then it wouldn’t be funny!” is actress Hannah Waterman’s take on why Abigail’s Party makes such compulsive, if awkward, viewing.
The former EastEnders actress – also a familiar TV face in Doctors, and New Tricks in which she appears alongside her father, former Minder actor Dennis Waterman – is starring as Beverly in a new production of the play which brings her to Newcastle next week.
And she has poor Beverly, with her aspirations, insecurities and class consciousness, pretty well sussed.
“She’s kind of a wag wannabe,” suggests the 37-year-old, explaining how the play remains relevant today.
“It’s interesting that when I’ve met people after the play, they all say ‘I know a Beverly’!” And that includes herself.
“I have someone in mind when I play her,” she confesses. “My Beverly is inspired by that person!”
Hannah saw Abigail’s Party about 20 years ago but has been keen to avoid seeing it again in case it influenced how she played her role.
“I haven’t re-visited it because I’m a bit of a sponge and I didn’t want to do a poor imitation of Alison Steadman and take on her rhythms and body language, although she was heavily pregnant at the time so her walk and movement were exaggerated.
“My Beverly is a little bit more sexual I suppose; I have a different interpretation.”
The dynamics, which pit her against Martin Marquez as increasingly nasty husband Lawrence, become different too as Beverly further embarrasses her guests by constantly sniping at him while flirting with neighbour’s husband Tony.
