It ends with a blast of Prince Charming by Adam and the Ants, but the song that resonates in Jack Bradfield’s production is Boredom by Buzzocks. Mike Leigh’s excruciating comedy of bad manners is the sound of the suburbs, the noise of people trying to fill a void.
The residents of Richmond Road, where Abigail, the 15-year-old punk, is throwing her party, have bought into a materialistic dream and found it wanting. They cling to what they can – cars, cocktail snacks, the complete works of Dickens – hoping to find solace in financial status, sex or a mysterious thing called art. Behind their polite chatter lie broken marriages, strained relationships and the suggestion of domestic violence. The comedy lies in their efforts to rein it all in.
Nothing can equal the grotesque masterstroke of the 1977 original, but Bradfield strikes an intriguing note of his own. The women, in particular, are less caricatured and more self-aware. As a Welsh-accented Beverley, Laura Rogers is not so much the domineering monster as the anxious hostess, causing offence through social awkwardness unless directing her bile at Leander Deeny’s Laurence, a man so stressed we see his heart attack coming the moment he gets home.
As new neighbour Angela, Chaya Gupta is not meek but assertive. She still has an unerring ability to say the wrong thing but is no longer the naive figure of fun. She is painfully wise to the coercive behaviour of her husband Tony, a taciturn Joe Blakemore.
Amy Rockson has similar authority as Susan, Abigail’s mother, not nearly as concerned about the party as her neighbours are, and bemused by the hosts’ petty games of one-upmanship. She is as puzzled by Tony’s book-learned response to Van Gogh as she is dismissive of his fear of the cosmopolitan.
A co-production between Northern Stage, the Rose in Kingston, Colchester’s Mercury and English Touring Theatre, it takes place on a vast expanse of white shagpile, where the zebra-skin throws, unused rotisserie and even Tony’s Mini are set out like a 70s show home. What Anna Yates’s design loses in domestic claustrophobia it gains in theatrical freedom in a production attuned to the pain behind the comedy.
• At Northern Stage until 28 September. Then at Mercury theatre, Colchester, 2-12 October; Blackpool Grand, 22-26 October; and Rose theatre, Kingston, 5-16 November.
