It's customary to think of Mike Leigh as a filmmaker but he cut his teeth in the theatre, assisting some notable directors, including Peter Hall, and devising a string of plays that exemplified the adage that "character is story".
Until now Leigh has never revived any of his plays. Yet here he revisits Ecstasy, which opened at this very venue in 1979. At the time he wanted to call it One Mile Behind You; an audience sitting in Hampstead would be just a mile from the comparatively mean streets of Kilburn, where the action is set, and he liked the idea of highlighting the differences between the two areas.
The title Leigh finally chose is more piercingly ironic. The play hints at the social upheavals and economic hardships of the late Seventies. It thus has a certain resonance for us now. But its appeal has more to do with the mixture of pathos and comic zest with which Leigh treats the rewards of marriage, the pleasures of friendship, and the agonies of solitude.
Jean, originally from Birmingham, works at a garage and seemingly lives on a diet of cigarettes, paperbacks and furtive glugs of booze. Her longstanding friend Dawn, married to roistering Mick, thinks that what Jean really needs is some male company.
In fact, she needs a change. The play opens with her stretched out naked in bed beside thuggish Roy, whose second line is "Good that, wannit?" - an indication of the high regard he has for his sexual abilities. Roy - who is married to Val (Claire-Louise Cordwell) - turns out be violent, and when Dawn interrupts one of his visits he's unceremoniously ousted.
This is the cue for a raucous night out, and later Jean entertains Dawn, Mick and their old friend Len in her bedsit. It's a boisterous gathering, lubricated by large amounts of gin. There are songs and bantering reminiscences. But a simple question hangs in the air: "Can Jean connect with Len?"
As in so much of Leigh's work, the emphasis is on mapping the contours of everyday events: their peaks of humour, troughs of sorrow, and swells of mundanity.
Superb performances ensure that Leigh's minor-key characters seem colossal. Siân Brooke's Jean is an aching study in repressed desperation, and Craig Parkinson's Len a fine portrait of gentle loyalty. Allen Leech makes Mick a charismatically troublesome attention-seeker, while Sinéad Matthews's Dawn is a small galaxy of exuberance.
Leigh directs with tact and wit, and, although there are a few longueurs, the production proves intimate and absorbing.
Until April 9 (020 7722 9301).
Ecstasy
Hampstead Theatre
Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, NW3 3EU
