IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL SNEER IF I WANT TO

I watched the DVD of Abigail’s Party the other day (‘devised’ by Mike Leigh).  I’d never seen it before.  Probably I should have but you know, some people have never seen Michael Snow’s Wavelength, I just hadn’t seen Abigail’s Party.

It says on the DVD box (for Abigail's Party, not Wavelength) that it features ‘the cocktail party from hell’ but I don’t think it features a cocktail party at all, unless you think gin and tonic or Bacardi and coke constitute cocktails. And certainly nobody in the play refers to it as a cocktail party.

I didn’t like Abigail’s Party much. I thought it was just a bunch of middle class thespians working too hard and sneering at the vulgarity of lower class suburbanites, though I dunno if I’d have felt that way if it’d seen when it was new  - 1977.  I mean, probably I’d have thought suburbanites totally deserved to be sneered at.  I may have softened a bit over the years.

Beverley (the ‘star turn,’ performed by Alison Steadman) is obviously categorized as a Philistine because she puts red wine in the fridge, doesn’t like olives, and serves cheese and pineapple on sticks. Hold that thought.

Life being as it is – a very good friend who knows my taste for kitsch and martinis sent me a copy of Shaken and Stirred: Derek Nimmo’s Complete Cocktail Companion, from 1984.  Readers not from England will be unlikely to know who Nimmo was.  He’s described in the author bio as being, as well as an actor, a ‘wit and raconteur’ don’t those words send shivers up the spine? 

Now I can’t swear that Nimmo wrote every or any word of the book – the text is copyright Victorama, which I discover was a ghost writing agency for celebs, founded by Giles Brandreth. Readers not from England will be unlikely to know who Giles Brandreth is, but trust me, in these parts those words send shivers up the spine. 

Still, the Nimmo does contain this gem in a section titled ‘Giving a Cocktail Party.’ Nimmo (or somebody) writes, ‘Apart from the usual party extras such as crisps, nuts and cubes of cheese … you might like to have a few bite-size extras …  pineapple chunks on sticks with cheese.’

Was this irony? I have no idea but it was obviously written well post-Abigail’s Party, and Nimmo’s image was not that of a suburbanite, he always played posh, though he probably wasn't as in life posh as he appeared in performance. Anyway this brings us to the divine Elaine Paige – who put this up on her Twitter feed.

She wanted us to know that she was getting through the lockdown thanks to cocktails rather than cock, though I don’t see that the two things are mutually exclusive. The fact that she put it on Twitter suggests Elaine might be more fun than I thought she was.  I wonder if cheese and pineapple on a stick features at these virtual cocktail parties. I’ll be disappointed if not.