Ecstasy

“Ecstasy is as much about a party as The Cherry Orchard is about real estate,” The New York Times once noted. There is a little cheeriness here, but this is a Mike Leigh creation. First staged in 1979, it’s set in the same year in tatty suburbia. Like many of Leigh’s works, it’s naturalistic — friends reunite in a London bedsit — and, as you might expect from the creator of Vera Drake, it verges on the pessimistic (one character is suicidal and has abortions).

This is the first time that Leigh has returned to a work, and, given his usual method for projects — he starts without a script and develops dialogue with his actors — it’s anyone’s guess how he will treat Ecstasy. He has enlisted the original designer, Alison Chitty, as well as Sinead Matthews, who is familiar with his ways from Happy-Go-Lucky. But whatever tack he takes, the production will be Mike Leigh through and through.