Mike Leigh’s deliciously squirm-inducing play of the 1970s is about a party – but it’s not Abigail’s.

That’s the bash next door hosted by Sue’s 15-year-old daughter, the one with the safety pins and the streak in her hair.

Poor Sue is taking refuge for the evening with neighbours Beverly and Laurence and, young newcomers to the street, Angela and Tony.

That’s where we are, in Beverly’s domain. Obviously Laurence lives there too, but he doesn’t wear the trousers, in the metaphorical sense.

No, Bev’s the boss – and she’s dreadful. Gloriously so – a bored, self-centred, flirtatious bully who keeps her stressed estate agent hubby on the tightest rein.

The neighbours are there to be patronised and force-fed nibbles and drinks (lots of drinks – and fags), all the while enabling Beverly to assert her superiority in matters of class and taste.

We, of course, can see that she has neither. That’s what makes it funny. You wouldn’t want to be on that sofa – real leather, note; not “leather look”, like Ange’s – but seeing it from afar is a treat, like watching people fall over on You’ve Been Framed.

Everyone who’s seen the play on TV visualises Alison Steadman as Bev, but Hannah Waterman slips effortlessly into her skin, or rather her floaty, cleavage-revealing green dress and glittering bling.

Katie Lightfoot’s twittering Angela is Bev’s brainless but willing accomplice, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her hostess is drunkenly seducing her husband because he once played football in the first team.

Tony (Samuel James) and Laurence (Martin Marquez) are hilariously repressed in the presence of their lady folk.

Laurence strives to exude sophistication with his row of elaborately bound Dickens novels and his classical music, the surprisingly apt Beethoven’s Fifth, while we sense Tony’s true feelings when Ange gigglingly recalls how he threatened to tape her mouth up.

Meanwhile, poor Susan (Emily Raymond), divorced and very proper, grows more and more rigid as the other women ply her with booze, probe into her private life and speculate about Abigail and her drunken friends.

Abigail’s Party has attained a new level of interest since it was first staged in 1977. It has become a period piece, a fascinating reminder of when brown and orange were the height of fashion, rugs were as fluffy as Persian cats and everyone was perpetually drunk or hung over.

From this perspective, with respect to the latter, you can see why.