Abigail's Party, Hampstead, London; <br></br>A Night in November, Tricycle, London

Fancy another go at the old cheesy pineapple?

You don't need to have been at Hampstead Theatre in April 1977 to register at least a flicker of recognition at Beverly's immortal line, "Cheesy pineapple, Ang?" – though if you had, David Grindley's valedictory production of Abigail's Party for the soon-to-be defunct theatre (the all-new auditorium opens in January 2003) will no doubt bring on the déjà vu. The set is a retro junkie's wet dream – all glass table tops and swirly fitted carpets, star clocks and furry loo-seat covers. And for those of us familiar with Mike Leigh's satire on Seventies suburban social mores through the BBC dramatisation, you'll think they've poached the set from the store cupboard at White City.

But what of the play, the GCSE set-text and all-round national treasure? Can we relate to a bunch of 20th-century nouveau riche suburbanites having an excruciating drinks party? And can it, in these irony-heavy days, ever be more than the kitsch fest Leigh so resents it becoming? Judging by the way members of the audience were guffawing at Angela's coos of admiration over Beverly's three-piece suite and candelabra ("Is it real silver?" ... "Yeah, silver plate"), he may be fighting a losing battle. We are definitely laughing at them, not with them. And this is undeniably a period piece. (Grindley's sensibly made no attempt to update the play, which is so steeped in its pre-Thatcherite milieu, it would be impossible to dress it up in anything but low-cut evening dresses and faux-leather sofas.)

But its outmodedness is exactly why it's still so captivating. It's a window onto a period of British social history which at once feels very distant from the New Labour Noughties and entirely relevant to it. Cheesy pineapple sticks may not grace many coffee tables these days, but as Big Brother effortlessly proves, we're perfectly capable of inane, patronising and bigoted talk. The Royle Family, Caroline Aherne's much-loved satire on modern family values, springs to mind as we watch Laurence, Beverly, Angela, Tony and Susan sitting around talking guff. What's so clever about Leigh's dialogue, is that despite the superficial level of conversation, the characters' true colours just cannot help revealing themselves – and what nasty, selfish, myopic colours they turn out to be. The casually racist remarks, the sudden threats of violence towards the two wives from their husbands and the constant sly digs (mostly from Beverly to everyone except her prey for the night, Tony) at others' perceived failings.

There's a danger here of sending up these characters so much that it descends into parody (which starts to happen in the increasingly farcical second half). But that's always been the challenge of Leigh's play. The other challenge is creating the monstrous Beverly without apeing Alison Steadman's famous performance. But from the moment Elizabeth Berrington enters, eyes full of haughty disdain, ostentatiously switching on the standard lamps one by one (saving the "fibre light" for a final, grand flourish) and flicking on Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby", we know Beverly's in safe hands. There are no weak links in this cast: as "Tone", Steffan Rhodri is chilling as he switches from monosyllabic wallflower to sexist bully and Wendy Nottingham is superbly uptight as odd-one-out, middle-class Susan. Just as air-head Angela is starting to grate, Rosie Cavaliero transforms her into an assertive, efficient and no-nonsense nurse, trying to save the life of Jeremy Swift's hen-pecked, Demis Roussos-hating Laurence.

Beverly's catty way of putting her neighbours down is strikingly similar in tone to Kenneth McCallister's gleeful boasting to his Catholic (and therefore, in his Ulsterman eyes, inferior) boss about being accepted into the local golf club. In Marie Jones's 1994 play A Night in November, this is where the upper echelons of Belfast society hang out and soak up the rays of their superior status.

As a jobsworthy dole clerk, nothing makes Kenneth's day more than the subtle humiliation of a "Fenian". But unlike Beverly and co, Kenneth has an epiphany, a moment of horrifying realisation that everything he stands for is morally repugnant. It happens at the 1993 World Cup qualifying match between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. He sees his own ingrained bigotry writ far larger, far nastier than he can stomach, as the Northern Ireland supporters jeer and taunt the winning team with threats of sectarian violence. Racked with guilt and self-disgust, he watches as the whole fabric of his existence comes away at the seams, based as it was, on a set of prejudices he'd inherited and never before thought to question.

As an account of an identity crisis, this is a highly watchable piece of drama, but as a "Troubles" play, it's slightly suspect. Tim Byron Owen's production is a well-paced, humourous game of two halves but Jones's simplistic approach to the characterisations – Prods equal uptight, joyless bigots; Catholics equal fun-loving, laid-back, drunken eejits – constantly undermines her protagonist's emotional journey. One feels that the playwright's own guilt about her heritage – deploying a bit of inverse prejudice to balance the books – is to blame here.

A Night in November certainly has the wit of her more famous play Stones in his Pockets (Kenneth notes that his daily checks under the car for devises are superfluous as he's "not even important enough to be on a hit list"), it just lacks the latter's more sophisticated plotting and characterisation. That said, Marty Maguire conjures an impressive line-up of characters, not least Kenneth's wheezing old chauvinist of a father-in-law.

We cheer for our hero as he slips off in the dead of night and boards a plane to America and the Irish World Cup match, but the scene continues in such a relentlessly cheery and sentimental manner, it swiftly loses credibility.

A Night in November is not without its more contemplative, probing moments, but it's essentially a rose-tinted fantasy about an Ireland we've so far seen little sign of. In a week which saw the IRA make a public apology for some of the murders it has perpetrated, Jones's play seems at once timely, and oddly out of sync.

Kate Bassett is away

'Abigail's Party': Hampstead, London NW3 (020 7722 9301), to 14 September; 'A Night in November': Tricycle, London NW6 (020 7328 1000), to Saturday