Beth Steel’s new play Till the Stars Come Down – zingingly directed by Bijan Sheibani – lands at the National with the biggest burst of backchat and joy that I have seen for months. It begins with “hello sugar tits”, with gossip about neighbours who have improved their garden with a “sex pond” (hot tub) and debates about whether you can wear a fascinator if you have a flat head. It ends in rawness and desolation, yet also with energy: the three women left standing – just – evoke Chekhov’s Three Sisters, but they belong to today and they come from Nottinghamshire.
A huge mirror ball hangs over the stage, fracturing the light designed by the mighty Paule Constable. Sometimes this looks like a bauble, sometimes like a silver planet: the dual aspects suggest the span of Steel’s writing in her best play yet. Till the Stars Come Down takes place at a wedding. You might expect trouble. Yet the varieties and depth of difficulty are unforseeable. They steal up like smoke between the gaps in the gags, and slowly engulf the action. Divisions going back to the miners’ strike, adultery, lost hope, bigotry. There is mayhem (“It’s not the first time we’ve had a meal out. We know how to kick off”), violence, fierce love and sharp sorrow.
