When an audience jumps to their feet the very second a show ends you know it’s a winner.
Well this was the case on press night for ‘Till the Stars Come Down’. It had an all too short run at the National Theatre last year so luckily for those of us who missed it we get a second chance to see this show – at the Royal Haymarket theatre – and it’s a must see show.
What exactly does ‘Till the Stars Come Down’ really mean. Well, this show centers around a wedding between Sylvia (Sinead Matthews) and Polish Marek (Julian Kostov). But it also focuses (very humorously too) on the rest of the family of Sylvia and her two sisters – including her sister Hazel (Lucy Black) – the one with the most serious issues of all the characters. And then there is Maggie (Aisling Loftus), who can’t seem to get her life together. So we are treated to many pre-wedding jitters and hilarious jokes (where the humour takes center stage), with funny one line zingers from Aunty Carol (Dorothy Atkinson). And then the post wedding reception takes place when it all really hits the fan, along with a naughty lie told by Hazels daughter that changes the trajectory of the wedding and the entire family relationship.
But the drama is very funny and the cast all work very very well with each other, working with a script by Beth Steel. If there’s anything negative about this show I would say that some of the accents (Midlands) of the actors are a bit hard to understand – so I missed some of the dialogue. Otherwise, it’s an almost perfect show with an amazing and frenzied outstanding cast (my plus one for the evening said it’s the best show he’s ever seen). I don’t know how the actors all get through eight shows a week – it’s physically very intense – but now you’ve got plenty of time to catch it before it closes – on September 27, 2025.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/till-the-stars-come-down/