Packed your fascinator? Rehearsed your most attractive crying face? Well, good; over in Mansfield – by way of the Theatre Royal Haymarket – the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov), and the audience, some of whom are sat directly on the stage, are all invited.
The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre early last year. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but.
As the lights come up on Samal Blak’s set, little of the grandeur associated with getting hitched is visible. There’s a huge disco ball hanging overhead, whizzing fragmented stars across the theatre, but this romantic image dissipates when it comes face to face with the realities of the working class family wedding: the electric fan, the TK Maxx shopper, the extension cord. Here, the sublime and the mundane exist in constant opposition; some characters dream aloud about the enormity of space and the universe, while others discuss their greying pubes.
Matthews’s Sylvia, our scratchy voiced bride, is getting ready for her big day. Buzzing with nervous energy, she is something of a supporting figure to her conversation-dominating sister Hazel (Lucy Black) and their other sibling Maggie (Aisling Loftus) who is back for the wedding after flying the nest for undisclosed reasons. The three sisters constantly oscillate, driving the chatter in turn. Unrealised tension simmers in the air – and that’s all before the true liability of the lot, Aunty Carol (a scene-stealing Dorothy Atkinson), rocks up in her rollers.
Alongside these hyper-realistic scenes, there are abstract set pieces where rain falls from the ceiling and time freezes still at the touch of Sylvia’s fingers. The experience is deliberately disorienting. There’s so much going on that Hazel’s casual comment about eastern European immigrants taking her husband’s job are easily missed. Quickly, they become unignorable. Asked if there will be any Polish traditions in the wedding, Aunty Carol shoots back: ‘Well, we’re not in Poland,’ then adds: ‘Not that you’d know.’
Initially, xenophobia appears to be the central conflict of the show; it certainly is for Marek, who is deeply frustrated that his wife won’t stand up for him against her ‘backward and bigoted’ family. But secrets have been buried everywhere: wedding drama clichés involving stolen kisses and affairs within the extended family are hinted at in the first act and released in the second, as the dance floor opens with Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre’ and everyone gets drunk and sloppy.
Steel knowingly riffs on these tropes. Some plot lines are fairly predictable, but they’re smartly undercut with a final act twist that leaves the audience gasping out loud. Her script is sharp and pacey and gives the funniest lines to the women, who also get the major tragic beats: the tears, the wailing, the clutching. It’s a reflection of a community still reeling from the effects of deindustrialisation and the closure of the pits. At least the women can feel something; their husbands, in contrast, are spoken about in the third person and walk around like ghosts when they do arrive.
In fact, the only man with any vibrancy is Marek. Bulgarian actor Kostov, who recently starred in The White Lotus and is making his West End debut, is a bright light, and throws himself with gusto into the often embarrassing action Steel’s script asks of him. Given the ropey accent of the actor Marc Wootton in the original run was one of the main criticisms made of the show, seeing Kostov shine is a relief as much as it is entertaining.
With so many different strands interwoven into the story – and Steel’s admirable efforts to fully realise every character – some do get left by the wayside. I particularly found myself wondering about Maggie’s past, and that the sisters’ widowed father Tony (Alan Williams) was left in stasis with many questions unanswered. But perhaps, as Till The Stars Come Down teaches us, that’s life. Tension has a way of coming to the surface whether we like it or not, but the endings aren’t always satisfying. Steel’s play ends as chaotically as it started, but with that unshakeable sadness now impossible to ignore.
