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Till The Stars Come Down (Theatre Royal, Haymarket)
Verdict: Putting the raw into raucous
A mirror ball hangs above the stage. It’s party time. Beneath it is a circled arena. Cue conflict. ‘Wouldn’t be much of a wedding without a punch-up,’ says one of the guests. And so it turns out in Beth Steel’s rich, raucous, raw play.
The play’s title echoes W. H. Auden’s poem Death’s Echo, its concerns perfectly caught by another line: ‘The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews’.
‘I’m so excited I could pee glitter!’ cries Maggie, one of three grown-up sisters preparing for ‘our Sylvia’s’ wedding to Polish Marek.
Peeing, pooping, sex ponds (aka hot tubs) and the deforestation (or not) of body hair are the matter for their hilarious chatter. Feelings are tightly zipped.
Working-class, post-industrial Nottinghamshire is an unusual location for a West End play. But this is doubtless the first time that an actor on the stage of the Theatre Royal has pulled up her hideous spray-on frock and pulled down her bladder-crushing Spanx and hurled them into the stalls.
Calm before the storm: Drink flows, and it will come to blows, at Marek and Sylvia’s wedding reception, in Till The Stars Come Down at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket
Each of Steel’s sharply-drawn, marvellously real characters nurses a secret sadness. Sinead Matthews’ bride-to-be is dreamy, subdued, reflecting on the past. Back in the Eighties, Sylvia’s ex-miner dad crossed the picket line, triggering a 40-year feud with his strike-supporting brother.
Marek arrived in the UK with a few quid and is now offering jobs to redundant locals too proud to take them.
Maggie left the town suddenly, without explanation.
Auntie-climax: Dorothy Atkinson, as outrageous Aunt Carol, dominates the dance floor
Dodgy reception: Well refreshed guests shake their booties in Till The Stars Come Down
Even Auntie Carol (Dorothy Atkinson, of Call The Midwife and The Gold), their dead mum’s best friend, and a woman with an outrageous, unfiltered opinion about everything, has a bleeding heart.
Director Bijan Sheibani’s superbly performed production, originally staged in the round at the National, feels confined and constrained by the Theatre Royal’s proscenium arch until the second half when everyone is loaded and legless and the torrent of pent-up resentment, rivalries, bitterness, bigotry and disappointment overflows. Highly recommended.
Until September 27 (trh.co.uk).
GEORGINA BROWN
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