Everywhere you look, the seventies are back — I’m even wearing flares as I sit down to write this review. The Cambridge Arts Theatre is no exception, this week hosting a production of Mike Leigh’s 1977 classic comedy Abigail’s Party.

The play is creeping up to its fiftieth anniversary but remains fresh, funny and full of life; London Classic Theatre’s five-person cast revives Leigh’s script with exquisite physical comedy, and a perfect dose of awkwardness. Abigail’s Party invites the audience to a drinks gathering at the home of Beverly and Laurence, dancing around conversations about status, class and gender with their neighbours.

“Exquisite physical comedy, and a perfect dose of awkwardness”

The first thing that struck me was the set design by Bek Palmer, a perfectly curated seventies living room, complete with garish wallpaper, kitschy ornaments, and cabinets that look like they’ve been wrenched straight off the walls of my Granny’s kitchen. Palmer is also responsible for the costumes, which suit each character perfectly. Beverly’s full length gown, wonderfully over-the-top for the occasion, was particularly stunning — if anyone knows where I can buy a similar number for May week, do let me know.

All these elements burst into life when Beverly, our bossy hostess, enters and berates her husband Laurence for working too much. He’s running late and has forgotten to buy lagers for a drinks party with their new neighbours Angela and Tony, plus Sue, who’s come over for some respite from her daughter’s titular party next door.

“Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party is a timeless masterpiece that had its audience roaring with laughter”

All five members of the cast gave convincing and nuanced performances, but Beverly, played by the brilliant Rebecca Birch, stole the show for me, making a hilarious spectacle of her character’s domineering, manipulative and arrogant tendencies, without neglecting the insecurities underpinning them. Alice De-Warrenne, playing Angela, was very natural as she bounced off and sucked up to her hostess. The pair’s increasing tipsiness, coupled with their husbands disapproval or indifference, was perfectly executed.

The overbearing hostess, the smalltalk, the tensions and the intrusive personal questions built as the evening went on to a celebration of complete self absorption. Themes of class and class performance, gender roles and dysfunctional married life are neatly woven into the evening’s discussion.

More than anything though, the play is just head-throw-back hilarious, and intensely relatable for anyone who’s ever arrived slightly-too-early to a party and been trapped at the whim of an insufferable host. The production’s juxtaposed moments of tension and lightness have been perfectly teased out by Michael Cabot, who first directed the play in 2007, but says that even now he is “finding new things and being challenged every time [he watches] the actors”.

Its furnishings and cultural references may be stuck in the seventies, but its humour certainly wasn’t — Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party is a timeless masterpiece that had its audience roaring with laughter, and longing to be unhappily married to a social climber with a shag carpet.

Abigail’s Party is showing at the Cambridge Arts Theatre Tuesday 21 - Saturday 25 March, 7:30pm