THIS IS LONDON SUMMER ISSUE 2025 - Flipbook - Page 46
46
TILL THE STARS COME DOWN
Theatre Royal Haymarket
Two families unite to form a new
generation. A young woman leaves
home – she is ‘given away’ by her father.
A young man secures a bride and, he
hopes, a happy home life. A wedding is
supposed to bring out the best in
people, surely?
Beth Steel’s tragi-comedy – received
to rapturous acclaim at the National
Theatre last year and now in the West
End – shows one such family at their
best and worst. At first, the things going
wrong on the morning of Sylvia’s
(Sinead Matthews) wedding are mere
hiccoughs in the planning. Her dress no
longer fits. She feels sick and hasn’t
slept. Her sisters, Hazel and Leanne,
rally round. Aunty Carol arrives to fill the
void left by the bride’s dead mother and
overall the atmosphere is one of high
pressure hairdressing, offset by tea and
biscuits.
There’s just one potential fly in the
ointment. Sylvia is marrying an
Photos: Manuel Harlan
immigrant. In Mansfield,
Nottinghamshire, union with a Pole is
not nothing. After all, Sylvia’s Dad
remembers when ‘a Geordie’ was a
foreigner in these parts.
The antagonism is partly the result of
a proud, unbending working class. Coal
mining once sustained the region, but
that source of income dried up entirely
in the 1980s after extensive industrial
unrest. No one in the family seems to
remember why Sylvia’s Dad and her
Uncle Pete don’t speak to each other (an
awkward factor in the wedding banquet’s
seating plan), but when revealed, the
reason is common enough locally: one
brother crossed the strikers’ picket line
and can never be forgiven. Incomers,
including eager East Europeans, are
hotly resented by this stratum of society
even now – at least in this drama.
Hundreds of miles away in a
cosmopolitan city like London, the
bigotry which ultimately spoils the
wedding party and acts as a lever to
fracture family ties is quite hard to
T H I S I S L O N D O N M A G A Z I N E • T H I S I S L O N D O N O N L I N E • w w w. t i l . c o m • @ t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g
Dorothy Atkinson.
The cast of 'Till the Stars Come Down'
comprehend. Easier to relate to are the
sibling relationships – the fierce bonds
of childhood which have become more
complex over a lifetime, and especially
since men entered the sisters’ lives.
Bijan Sheibani’s production is a
brilliantly dynamic, lively, joyous collage
of scenes and well acted from top to
bottom (that is, even including the child
actors.) Inside the party venue, speeches
full of poetry contrast with snide
comments. There is singing and
dancing. Outside in the car park, illicit
liaisons are enacted and some of these
are seen by others slipping past.
The audience at the Theatre Royal
was thoroughly engaged. Each time a
secret was in danger of being exposed,
a gasp went up. Needless to say none of
the characters is left unchanged by the
end of the play. There is no easy
reconciliation to smooth over the
fissures in this fictional family – but the
catharsis is both exhausting and thought
provoking.
Sue Webster
