Keeping up with the Jones’ has never been so entertaining. By lending an Australian flavour to Mike Leigh’s play Abigail’s Party, Director Mark Kilmurry has spiced up a mid-seventies classic.

Beverly Ross (Queenie van de Zandt) is throwing a party for the new neighbours, and by george, she’s determined to enjoy it. Pineapple and cheese on toothpicks and all. Her long-suffering workaholic husband Lawrence (Brian Meegan) tries his best to stop her embarrassing Sue (Julie Hudspeth), the neighbourhood divorcee, whose daughter Abigail, is having her first teenage party tonight. However, like the long-awaited Godot, Abigail is only present in name and in the thumping bass we can hear, four doors away. The real party is happening in Beverly Ross’ lounge room.

Abigail’s Party is a social commentary about the aspirational middle class and remains as relevant today as it was in the 70s (I couldn’t help seeing glimpses of Kath and Kim). Angela (Tara Morice) and the delightfully taciturn Tony (Ben Ager) represent the ‘new money’ who have just moved in to the area. The first act passes with many groans and cringes at the characters’ lack of tact, while in the second act, predictably, all the tension and awkwardness comes to a head, with the characters proving to be more three-dimensional than previously thought, and also uprooting the white picket fences around suburban Australia.

The credit of this performance must go to the superb cast, whose perform their lines with the most perfect comic timing I have witnessed, leaving the audience in peals of snorting laughter. I’m sure that everyone in the audience recognises someone from their family in each of the characters. The facial expressions and squirming of Hudspeth’s Sue must have taken hours to master, but the result is hilarious, while van de Zandt is a scream as the naieve yet overbearing Beverly.

Meticulous attention to detail has been paid in the set, which occupies the entire wall of the Ensemble theatre. The lounge room is straight out of a 70s sitcom, complete with tacky wallpaper, brown leather sofa and a pretty silver globe that opens up to reveal – voila – cigarettes!

Leigh’s script holds up a cracked mirror to society and combines the painful truth with humour. It remains as relevant today as it was when flares and afros were in fashion.