Writer: Beth Steel
Director: Bijan Sheibani
As we leave January behind us, we can embrace the warming prospect that we shall soon see the arrival of Spring, traditionally the season when wedding bells fill the air. Beth Steel’s new comedy/drama adds a dash of trepidation to this thought as she sets out the routines attaching themselves to a working-class wedding in Northern England and then tears them apart.
Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is getting married to Marek (Marc Wootton), a self-made businessman of Polish origin. She panics as she fails to zip up her wedding dress while her father, Tony (Alan Williams), a widower, is waiting to give her away. Hazel (Lucy Black) and Maggie (Lisa McGrillis) are her sisters, the former married to unemployed John (Derek Riddell) and with two mischievous young daughters, the latterhaving moved away from the area a year earlier for mysterious reasons.
Steel reserves her most acerbic lines for the forthright Aunty Carol (a stand-out performance from Lorraine Ashbourne), who is married to Tony’s estranged brother Pete (Philip Whitchurch). Carol takes control on arrival and suffers the indignity of having her flamboyant hat attacked by the cat. The perceptive comedy rolls along briskly during the first act, but appears to be going nowhere until everything starts to unravel.
The writer’s proposition is that the rituals in place at weddings, partly designed to paper over cracks in family life, in fact serve to magnify them and bring them to the surface. She harks back to themes in her 2014 play, Wonderland to find lingering resentments resulting from the 1984/85 Miners Strike and she exposes the racism that underlies the family’s reluctant acceptance of Malek. Most telling are the long-suppressed passions that are unleashed by an excess of Polish vodka, seen when John and Maggie are caught in an embrace and when Tony becomes Tarzan and, hilariously, wrestles with a crocodile before carrying Jane (Aunty Carol) over his shoulder to safety.
Director Bijan Sheibani’s slick production thrives on magnificent ensemble acting that brings the many characters to vivid life. Designer Samal Blak takes full advantage of the staging that is in-the-round, literally, marked out like the centre circle on a football pitch, perhaps symbolising a wedding band, or, more likely, a circus ring. The reception, for which the family convenes around a giant revolving top table is a first act highlight.
Steel’s play lulls the audience into a false sense of security by starting out as a cosy comedy and then turning itself into a raw and real family drama, building to an explosive climax which rattles the foundations of the Dorfman Theatre.
Runs until 16 March 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Raw and real
