RAISE a glass and a little top-up to the Theatre Royal's best repertory show of 2005... and 1977.

The programme's pastiche of the infamous Jamie Reid cover for Never Mind The Bollocks (or Botox here) was a reminder that '77 was the year of the Sex Pistols and the Queen's Silver Jubilee, but also of Mike Leigh's devastating caustic comedy Abigail's Party.

Britain was on the eve of the acquisitive era of material greed: fibre-optic lamps and brown leather sofas were already ubiquitous status symbols. Seeing that decor again at the North London home of blonde vulture Beverly and workaholic Laurence induces sea sickness, all the more so for designer Emma Donovan constructing a skewed perspective by dint of a heavily raked floor and an ever-rising yet still claustrophobic ceiling.

The effect is to create a vortex into which Sara Poyzer's Beverly sucks her guests on a surfeit of gin, light ale, cigarettes and Demis Roussos and Tom Jones records.

Andonis Anthony's Laurence, ever fidgeting with his suit trouser leg, is an ulcer waiting to burst or worse, forever driven down cul-de-sacs by his witless wife, who is as loud and tasteless as her riotous dress.

Helen Goldwyn's loquacious new neighbour, nurse Angela, is a painfully humorous study of pie-eyed drunken gabbling and wide-eyed wonder at Bev's kitchen gadgets. Legs splayed and words tumbling around her, she never overplays a line. Likewise, John Kirk's ex-footballer, taciturn Tony, mines early humour from monosyllabic responses, but gradually darkens with his physique becoming ever more imposing. Even his beard seems to blacken.

Beatrice Comins's quiet, middle-class neighbour Sue makes you feel as uncomfortable as her, too polite to decline another drink while being insensitively badgered about her ex-husband and fretting over teenage daughter Abigail's party with her punk friends (as the Pistols and The Clash records play scenes in and out).

Leigh's writing is as sharp as a punk safety pin, his contempt unconfined for values so anathema to him. Marcus Romer's production squeezes maximum juice from the lemon, the comedy turning ever more bitter until the juddering finale. He foregoes the multi-media go-faster-stripes of his Pilot Theatre work, instead letting the cast do all the talking.

Led by Poyzer flicking ash here, squirting spray there and always going too far, they have one heck of party from hell on a fabulously ghastly night at the theatre.

Abigail's Party, York Theatre Royal, until July 23. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 11:40 Thursday, July 14, 2005