"Till The Stars Come Down" by Beth Steel

Nottingham Playhouse.

This is the regional premiere of the play. It originally premiered at London's National Theatre in 2024. It subsequently transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London's West End in 2025. The production was nominated for two 2024 Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Play.

It’s Sylvia and Marek’s big day and the Stone family have gathered in Mansfield. The bride, her sisters and aunties are getting their glam on and everyone’s on their best behaviour. For now. But once the vows have been made and the drinks start flowing, deep-seated family resentments begin to bubble up. When secrets start spilling out, alliances shift, and by the end of the night, nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Having spent a good part of my working life being a DJ on mobile discos from the 1970's to the mid 2000's, you get to see both the happy celebratory receptions, as well as those that end up more like a boxing tournament as families clash and arguments spill over, mainly in the car park or on the dancefloor, as to minor issues like whether the DJ should play songs like "It Should Have Been Me" - that one is from personal experience, or which family member has, or has not snogged the bridesmaid or Best Man!

Sylvia, the bride, is played by local actor and theatre maker, AK Golding. From the morning of the wedding with worries about how Sylvia's hair looks and the wedding dress issues to the blow up of the family and some of the family not liking the groom because he is Polish, we see the happy, the melancholy and the angry, all within the space of a few hours. 

Marek is played by Ivan Ivashkin. This is a brilliant character and very fiery. Loved the dance scenes and the unexpected karaoke of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", with alternate lyrics. Anyone who knows me, know that I love a good, accurate accent, and I realised why the Polish accent was so good when looking in the programme. 

 Joe Alessi plays Uncle Pete. There's a lovely scene which I can recognise from wedding discos regarding place mats on the top table which involves Pete and Carol. There's an air about Pete when around his brother which we find out about fully later on.

Maggie, who has returned to the family fold especially for the wedding after a year away, is played by Leah Brotherhead. Maggie is quite a hedonistic character and is very quick-witted. There are mysterious teases as to why Maggie moved away from the area, but the real truth is revealed during the melee of the wedding reception, and when that truth comes out, it does not end well for many of the characters.

Ellie Daley is Leanne, the teenage daughter of John and Hazel. This show utilises a lot of local actors and Ellie, who has trained at The Nottingham Television Workshop, is just one of them, making her adult professional stage debut as Leanne. Leanne is a troubled character, and again we discover why, throughout the play. Ellie is a fine example of the sort of quality that Nottingham can deliver from the Nottingham Television Workshop.

Graham Hawley, who you may recognise from playing John Stape in "Coronation Street", plays John, Hazel's partner. We can clearly feel the tension between this pair from the start, but it's not until later on that we find out exactly what the bone of contention really is.

Emma Pallant plays Hazel, the Bride's sister. We've all seen the chaos on the wedding morning, getting everything right, juggling several balls in the air at the same time, all the while trying to give that impression that all is in control. But it's when the wedding reception has ended and the chance to relax and have a drink with the family that brings forth the family history. She has a soft spot still for John, recalling what her first throes of love was like with him, and how they compare with the staleness of their relationship currently. You really do feel for Hazel because she is the archetypal mother of the bride, just wanting everything to go smoothly, but we all know that drink and loose lips are always going to reveal secrets and lies at a family do!

Auntie Carol is played by Sadie Shimmin. I absolutely love this character and I have seen so many Auntie Carols over the years. A person can become very comical when drink starts to flow, and even more so when that flow can't be stemmed. Sadie is obviously a fantastic actor to play a drunken Aunt so well; the off balance staggering and that facial look, plus the ability to start a sentence, repeat it and then forget what they were talking about. I also loved her comparison of old age with cottage cheese, it's something that you need to hear! 

Howard Ward is Tony who returns to The Playhouse after a break of over forty years to play the elder statesman of the Stone family. Many highlights with this character, but none more so in the Tarzan scenes with Auntie Carol. This in turn brings about a darker delve into the past with revelations of why he and his brother Pete fell out.

Sarah, who is the youngest daughter of Hazel and John, is played by Anya Marshall or Amelia Yates, depending on which performance you see in this run. On Thursday night it was Anya's turn. Both Anya and Amelia  are training at the Nottingham Television Workshop, and both make their professional stage debuts. Anya has a real stage presence and has that lovely natural feel about her performance, getting to run through a range of emotions from start to finish.

Directed by Caroline Steinbeis, there are really nice pace changes throughout but then comes that boulder rolling down the hill moment when nothing can be stopped, and that pace really takes you with it. There's some excellent comedy pieces and there are some scenes that hit you like a slap around the face. 

It's a beautifully observed and written theatrical piece which has the ability to make you recall possible flashbacks to your own past or recollections. The language is pure East Midlands with so many local phrases which soon had me smiling in remembrance of some that I had not heard in quite a few years. I had been waiting for this play for ages in anticipation - I adore local writing for theatre, and this is top class theatre, performed by a top class cast.

Oli Townsend's set design starts to come to view after scenes played out in front of the curtains. It's then we get to see the wedding reception set up with the long top table. This then changes to a buffet room where we get to see and hear a lot of the unravelling of the family secrets.

Lighting Designer is Johanna Town and Oliver Vibrans is the Sound Designer and Original Music Composer. The scene with the dancefloor music and the family strutting their stuff is another lovely comedy scene, which also led to a discussion about the DJ and who they had played for locally, and gave a background to some of the local characters, not seen on stage.

Kate Godfrey is the Voice and Dialect Coach, and someone else who brought the reality to sections of this play was Ruth Cooper-Brown of Rc-Annie, Director for the Fight and Intimacy scenes.

This play carries on the local writers season for the Playhouse, showing the talent of local writers as well as local acting talent alongside some great theatre actors. 

The play brings to the stage snapshots of everyone's past, and everyone can relate to a lot of the issues in the play, making for a brilliant night of theatre, so don't think about buying tickets for "Till the Stars Come Down", forget the thought process, just get your tickets now while you still can and the show sells out.

"Till The Stars Come Down" is at the Nottingham Playhouse until Saturday 26 September.