Writer: Beth Steel
Director: Bijan Sheibani
Revival Director: Elin Schofield
Beth Steel’s Till the Stars Come Down is one of the most significant plays of the last few years, a rare state-of-the-nation piece that focuses principally on the experience of women and the closing down of opportunity and aspiration in their lives as a consequence of deindustrialisation, the long aftermath of which tears through this outstanding drama. Transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket following its barnstorming debut at the National Theatre in January 2024, Bijan Sheibani’s production has lost none of its agonising firepower.
As Sylvia’s family gather for her wedding to Marek (Julian Kostov), a day of celebration becomes a place for everyone to air their grievances. From her sisters – Maggie and Hazel – struggling to find work and their place in a changed world, to her nieces Leanne and Sarah seeing nothing ahead but more of the same and their menfolk living out the grievances of the past, they all learn there is no coming back once you have crossed the line.
Set in a former Nottinghamshire mining community, Steel’s play puts women at the heart of this story, not as adjuncts to the strikes 40 years ago but as workers and individuals whose aspirations and daily lives have been entirely shaped by their sense of abandonment. And Till the Stars Come Down is full of lingering ghosts, of the Club that used to be the vibrant social centre of the village but now charges a fortune to hire; the haunted men, like Hazel’s husband John (Adrian Bower), reduced first to short term contracts and then to unemployment after the pits closed, and the happier past that Hazel in particular still hopes will return where shopping trips with her mum ended in cream teas and life seemed full of possibility.
Yet while their circumstances are abject, the chronic feeling of being ‘stuck’ now second nature, Steel creates a family group alive with personalities and a capacity for living that lights up the stage. The sisters are strongly drawn and contrasting, Hazel enduring as best she can, living day to day to support her family, Sylvia marrying Polish resident Marek and embracing a merging of cultures that expands her perspective on the world, and Maggie, who left suddenly, the only one trying a new life somewhere else. Together they banter and reminisce, dance wildly and scream at one another; they feel alive in a dead world, they feel like a family.
Steel’s writing is snappy and sharp, conversations overlapping, the sense that they have told the same stories to each other over and over, had the same rows and supported each other through it all. Sheibani’s in-the-round production at the National is semi-recreated with onstage seating at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, supported by revival director Elin Schofield, and creating opportunities for interaction as the newlyweds greet their guests and encourage them into a singalong. But it also leaves them nowhere to turn when the truths come tumbling out in the decisive final act, illuminated by Paule Constable’s stark, unforgiving lighting.
Sinéad Matthews returns to the role of compliant Sylvia, who faces a reckoning on her wedding day, along with the equally excellent Lucy Black as troubled Hazel, desperately clinging to the past because she cannot face tomorrow. Joining them, Aisling Loftus’ Maggie is a little paler than Lisa McGrillis’ original, but that brings other characters to the fore, including a show-stealing Dorothy Atkinson with superb comic timing, whose Aunty Carol is prissier than Lorraine Ashborne’s but equally delightful.
Brilliant as they all are, the men are secondary to this drama; they orbit the women and let them down, the world they made is gone, and the women are picking up the pieces. A true state-of-the-nation play, Till the Stars Come Down is a tragicomic masterpiece of everyday life in a place long forgotten.
Runs until 27 September 2025
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