Beth Steel’s award-winning super popular play Till the Stars Come Down started life at the National Theatre’s Dorfman Theatre space. It successfully transferred to the West End and has been produced in many countries around the world including Japan in 2025. Imagine that! All over Tokyo they are saying “Come on duck let’s pop down t’Parco Theatre int Shibuya district. They’re doing Hoshi no Furu Toki by that there Beth Steel.”

And now it is showing at Nottingham Playhouse. Not in Japanese – but in a fruity North Notts dialect and it proves to be a chaotic confetti of calamitous confessions – a rather wonderful play about the very ordinary made extra-ordinary. Of all its audiences worldwide I predict that the Nottinghamshire visitors to Nottingham Playhouse will be the most appreciative. Even Lord Byron didn’t match such poetic beauties as Beth Steel’s characters blurting out “As tight as a camel’s arse in a sandstorm.” or as Aunty Carol declares… “Now there’s a man I won’t kick outta bed for fartin!”

The language is often direct and very much of this East Midlands region and aside from its sometimes blunt and crude nature the text also contains verbal observations of distinct care and love between the characters. The original Dorfman theatre production was performed in the round in a very claustrophobic circular arena and this worked well regarding intimate moments and making the audience feel part of the story. The Nottingham Playhouse production uses all of the main stage and spills out into the central and side aisles. This greater element of stage freedom really works in the production’s favour magnifying the focus on the characters. The hand held camera work at the wedding table is especially good and also when the electrifying disco dance scene happens.

Audiences are warned that the play contains strong language, sex, abusive behaviour, racism and grief. Deep seated family resentments exploding in a drama never sounded so appealing me ducks!

There’s enough energy in this play to light up a former coal face and the drama marries out-and-out hilarity with family secrets revealed, bigotry spoken at the top table, and divorce proceedings likely to begin before the ink is dry on the marriage register of Sylvia (A K Golding) and her Polish husband Marek played by Ivan Ivashkin. Both of these two leads are excellent.

All of the ensemble are terrifically cast and do a stellar job of bringing their characters and their dreams, their regrets, their life and work expectations, their family and world loves and prejudices alive on stage. They are as follows; Uncle Pete (Joe Alessi), Maggie (Leah Brotherhead), Leanne (Ellie Daley), John (Graeme Hawley), Hazel (Emma Pallant), Aunty Carol (Sadie Shimmin), Tony (Howard Ward), and Sarah (Anja Marshall on press night). The play’s voice and dialect coach is Kate Godfrey. Set designer is Oli Townsend. Lighting designer: Johanna Town. Sound designer and composer: Oliver Vibrans.

There is no murky stone left unturned in this gripping story of the Stone family and I suspect many Notts folk will see themselves or at least people they know (and possibly avoid) in characters like the larger-than- life gobby Aunty Carol superbly played by Sadie Shimmin or other estranged siblings forced together in what is supposed to be a day of marital joy in the often joyless world set around de-industrialised Mansfield.

Whilst played as naturalistic as possible on the main stage Till The Stars Come Down is almost a melodrama – or a Greek play, a domestic comedy drama with three sisters at its centre. It is never preachy and brings into its folds much that refers back with regret to the former coal pits in North Nottinghamshire and a time of full mining employment prior to their closure, and the local arrival of eastern European companies in Mansfield’s community base.

What begins as a slightly Bucks Fizz boozy, excitable pre-wedding ‘dressing and preparing’ the bride moment for the women of the family where, ominously, the wedding dress doesn’t fit at the back; it is suggested that Sylvia, the bride-to-be, has a poo to be able to squeeze into the wedding gown. Sylvia’s dead mother’s wedding dress is utilised and things remain optimistic until the top table scene where we are introduced to the men and the Polish vodka begins to flow with predictable and unpredictable results in home truths and subtle and blatant xenophobia towards Marek and his kin.

As audience members we are invited to this stage wedding. You might well find yourself laughing enough to ‘pee your pants’ like Emma Pallant’s Hazel to start with.

But the going gets very tough by the time this wedding day is over for the Stone family. Rather than being voyeurs to the drama we are more like tender witnesses somewhat bloodied and frazzled by the events and fights of the day.

This drama is highly recommended by us and a terrific final inclusion to Nottingham Playhouse’s plays by established local writers Beth Steel, William Ivory and Jane Upton. More programming like this please Nottingham Playhouse.

Till The Stars Come Down directed by Caroline Steinbeis runs at Nottingham Playhouse until Saturday 26th September. Book now – it’s chuffin’ marvellous.

Photography credit: Sam Taylor.