Play of the week: Before the Party, Almeida Theatre, London N1

Alex Price (David Marshall) and Katherine Parkinson (Laura Whittingham) star in Before the Party (Keith Pattison)

There are yelps of scandalised laughter throughout Matthew Dunster's miraculously acted revival of a 1949 gem by Rodney Ackland.

Set in Surrey amid the middle-classes in 1949, it focuses on a family who are preparing to go to a social-climbing function that the stuffy father (Alex Price) can't miss. It all goes wrong when his daughter (Katherine Parkinson, brilliant) tells them part of the reason she's a widow.

Part of the comedy flows from the way that, even when talk of murder et al silences the crew, self-interest soon re-asserts itself. Stella Gonet is beyond praise as the mother and Dunster retains control of the play's waverings of mood. Sheer spiky bliss.

020 7359 4404, to 11 May