Review: TILL THE STARS COME DOWN, National Theatre

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

While most of us have attended a wedding in our lives, perhaps none so eventful and chaotic as that depicted in Till the Stars Come Down, written by Beth Steel, now playing in the Dorfman space at the National Theatre.

The production has something to offer at every twist and turn - covering a wide variety of themes and featuring some truly stellar comedic performances. Even at the end of the piece, when the show seems to have become enveloped in its own meticulously manufactured chaos, it finds a way of leaving us all with a different lasting impact to draw on our own experience.

While the main drive of the narrative is the wedding of Sylvia (Sinead Matthews) and Marek (Marc Wootton), the wider play uses this narrative device as a melting pot for exploring the frayed nature of working-class family relationships within all manner of themes. As Sylvia’s large family gather around the dining table, it doesn’t take long before deep-rooted and previously only hinted at prejudices come bubbling to the surface. Steel does an excellent job at building to this, managing to mask characters’ red flags with comedy while they are preparing for the wedding to only hint at what is to come just the right amount, she exercises much restraint in these opening scenes so as to reveal exactly what the audience needs to know about the very grounded people we are presented with as a part of this dysfunctional family.

From a directorial point of view, Bijan Sheibani manages to balance the atmosphere of the piece excellently, using the clear strengths of each of the performers in the cast to his advantage and never dropping the pace or momentum of the piece, even in the more sombre scenes. As the chaos begins to build, we are able to track and register how each character reacts, every beat is given the right amount of attention and recognition without being handed to us on a plate – allowing for a brilliant level of engagement with the performance and its themes. Sheibani has clearly created a space that allows Steel’s fully formed characters to come alive in ways that we are all familiar with and recognise, for better or for worse, within our own families.

This is helped massively by the cast, in particular, audience favourite Aunty Carol, played with utter comedic conviction by Lorraine Ashbourne. From her first entrance, she holds the audience in the palm of her hand with ease. Delivering line after line of consistent, shocking hilarity and eliciting eruptions of tension cutting laughter. Marc Wootton here is also able to hold our full attention and later, sympathy, as Marek, giving a performance that reveals layer after layer of heart underneath an initially comedic performance.

Set (Samal Blak) and lighting (Paule Constable) design compliment the piece well, providing a playing field for the game of the wedding to develop, characters can step in and out of the ring to engage with others, in ‘battle’ or in comfort as their relationships develop over the course of two and a half hours, and there are some wonderful moments of lighting that add to the emotionally charged atmosphere of the piece wonderfully.

While, at times, it can feel as if the play lacks a definitive conclusion to its many threads; where racism is depicted on stage towards Wootton’s Marek, there seems to be little development for the characters that it comes from by the end of the piece; where the pit closures are referenced a handful of times in the piece, there seems to be little pay-off; an adultery storyline only adds to a building list of things that occur along the way, with further events that we shan’t spoil here. We feel that this overwhelming series of events and subsequent lack of resolution – for want of a better word – is the point. We come away from the play questioning our own interfamily relationships and thinking ‘how can I avoid or prevent that?’

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Matthew Foster

Till The Stars Come Down plays at the National Theatre until 16 March, with further information here.