Till the Stars Come Down

 Nottingham Playhouse

19^th September 2026, matinee

“I'm not ready for tomorrow. I'm not ready”

The Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2024 was a tight race. Whilst the winner, James Graham’s Dear England, cut through to the wider public in a way that not many plays do, I felt it was too long and sprawling to win. Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California was a split-time family drama which explored the legacies of abuse and the way we tell stories to shape our lives. Jack Thorne’s theatrical biopic The Motive and The Cue was excellent and probably a more worthy winner than Dear England. And then there was Beth Steel’s Till the Stars Come Down. Another play about sisters (like Butterworth’s), Steel’s hilarious and well-observed comedy of a family wedding in her native Mansfield is a masterpiece. Now receiving its regional premiere at Nottingham Playhouse no less, director Caroline Steinbeis brings the play home in a suitably rowdy production which isn’t afraid to get cheek-by-jowl with the audience.

It’s Sylvia’s wedding day and the family have gathered to celebrate her nuptials to Marek. A wedding is perfect breeding ground for drama: sibling rivalries, long-buried tensions that surface, temptations to give into, a drunk aunt. They provide a crucible for elements that, when combined, spit and crackle. And yet they’re seldom done well. A comedy focusing on working class characters at a wedding has the potential to veer into a cheap farce like Fur Coat, No Knickers. But the compassion Steel has for all of her characters and their well-mined, satisfyingly realised backstories ensures that their class is not the butt of the joke. The love and tensions which underline the relationships between Steel’s characters, particularly the main trio of sisters, is compelling. The first scene portrays the bride getting ready, and it’s the eldest sister Hazel (Emma Pallant) who whips them all into shape. Her husband (Graeme Hawley) is out of work and she’s juggling two kids in addition to taking on the maternal role to her two sisters. She’s just about in control but also looks as if she’s got the world on her shoulders. Whereas Hazel’s a home bird, Maggie (Leah Brotherhead) is flightier. She’s been through several husbands, not visited home in six months and has an underlying dissatisfaction which can lead her astray (the reason she’s not visited soon becomes apparent). Complementing them both is Sylvia, and in AK Golding’s portrayal, we see her kind-heartedness and wide-eyed naivety. There’s enough for a play there in these characters alone, but Steel, who has a fine ear for the Nottingham vernacular, peoples her play with a richly-drawn family.

Their widowed dad (Howard Ward), a retired miner, is imbued with a sadness that he’s giving away his last daughter; seeing her in his wife’s wedding dress, he nearly faints – a reminder that a marriage is more than just a wedding. His 40-year rift with his brother Pete (Joe Alessi) over their different views in the miners strikes comes to the fore in the final acts. The personal and political impact of the miners strikes in Nottingham have been thrillingly dramatised in Steel’s own Wonderland (2014) and Graham’s BBC series Sherwood. Here the strikes are a part of the family’s history, deeply-rooted in these characters and shaping the way the brothers are defined to the rest of their family. And by drawing on real local history, it’s another example of Steel adding texture to her characters. Steel’s skill is her dialogue: we recognise this family and the way they speak. Amazingly, for me, they speak in a way I instantly recognise but seldom hear on stage. This is no more apparent than in Sadie Shimmin’s tour-de-force performance as Aunty Carol. With no airs and graces, Carol gate crashes top table, clears the floor with her rendition of ‘It’s Raining Men’, and becomes more sharp-tongued as the drink flows. But, as much as the dialogue is prosaic, there are moments of poetry as Steel reflects on the insignificance of the characters’ problems against the weight of history and the massiveness of the universe. Alessi’s speech where he recounts all of Nottinghamshire’s mining towns whilst rubbing the rim of a wine glass is particularly moving – and perhaps all the more so performed in Nottingham. And what’s especially nuanced is her ability not to draw easy conclusions. For instance, Sylvia’s groom Marek (Ivan Ivashkin) is Polish and there are tensions about the apparent influx of Polish immigrants in the local area. But at the same, we’re reminded that immigrants have long been a part of the town’s history.

Whereas the original National Theatre production was played in the round, Steinbeis presents the play end-on. Initially, this seems worrying as the first scene, played in front of a curtain, can seem flat. But throughout the play, the playing space (set by Oli Townsend) opens up and the cast warmly includes the stalls as part of the playing space. It’s a decision which pays off. It may seem frenzied but, like with any wedding especially where the characters are so brash, we take the rough with the smooth. There are a multitude of plot twists as the evening progresses and blood is spilt before the evening is out. The three sisters will never be quite the same again, and Steel cleverly hints that these multigenerational tensions will impact the next one too. The whole cast relish their parts. And thanks to Steel and her Chekhovian skill, there’s a lot to relish.

Till the Stars Come Down plays at Nottingham Playhouse until 26^th September. For more information, please visit https://nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/events/till-the-stars-come-down/

Leah Brotherhead, Emma Pallant and Sadie Shimmin in Till the Stars Come Down. Credit: Sam Taylor