TILL THE STARS COME DOWN
TILL THE STARS COME DOWN, Secret House in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre at KXT on Broadway, 17 March-11 April 2026 Photography by Braiden Toko: above - company; below: Peter Eyers and Jo Briant; below again - Jane Angharad and Ainslie McGlynn
Secret House, with bAKEHOUSE, has staged a five-star production of Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down that opens with “I can smell burning,” and goes on to chats between three sisters and their aunt that includes revelations about greying pubes (from non-grey Aunty Carol – splendid Jo Briant), and the description of next-door’s hot tub as a “sex pond”.
Last year, Steel wrote in The Guardian, “One of the things I treasure most about writing plays is the opportunity to suspend judgment – my characters speak and I listen; my characters do and I watch…”
It’s the perfect way to approach the play, and probably life too, as increasingly, we rush to judgment before tripping on our prejudices and falling flat on our faces. It’s what has happened to Britain, especially over various waves of immigration and class warfare.
Steel’s highly successful 2024 play (National Theatre, Olivier nomination, West End transfer, international and translated productions, etc.) is an ambitious bid by the independent company. It’s a work that’d usually be grabbed by a deep-pocketed STC or Belvoir because, with a cast of ten and a complex script, it demands the money and time that independents simply don’t have. Not this time!
In the opening 15 minutes, we learn that not only is Steel an acutely political writer, but also that she is wonderfully comical. So a play set in a blighted town in the Midlands, with its history of coal mine closure, right-wing populist rise, and Brexit disappointment, is also a fount of funny. And right now, while enduring the catastrophe of Trump, funny is as welcome as Carol saying she married hubby Pete (Brendan Miles) because he looked at her as if she was “a potato in a famine.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a cynic or realist to wonder when the sky will fall in because the 120 minutes (including interval) are centred around a wedding day, an immigrant, and a sit-down family wedding feast – all likely to end in tears. And lo! Here come illicit kisses, simmering sibling resentment, bratty kids, drunken spewing in corners, racism, bigotry, and the inevitably excessive emotion of such situations.
Recently, Anthony Skuse directed a memorable version of The Cherry Orchard and his thrilling ability to give Chekhov the laughter and pathos so often missed by portentous auteurs is evident here, with three sisters, dopy husbands, and ennui- and grief-stricken Dad (thoughtfully tender Peter Eyers). Skuse orchestrates the physicality of constantly moving sequences of characters without losing the human heart of each relationship and person. It’s captivating to watch in KXT’s traverse space.
Central to the outstanding ensemble, and more hurt and ferocious by the minute as she begins to suspect the worst, is a breathtaking Ainslie McGlynn as Hazel, whose husband John (James Smithers) is out of work and out of love. Baby sister Sylvia (Imogen Sage) is marrying Polish emigré Marek (Zoran Jevtic), and elder sister Maggie (Jane Angharad) has returned after an unexplained year’s absence.
Peripheral to the adults but never missing a word are Sylvia’s daughters Leanne (Amy Goedecke) and Sarah (Kira McLennan), the latter a precocious miss who might be heading for trouble…
The play follows the course of the wedding day, on a simple set by James Smithers, with lighting by Topaz Marlay-Cole that leaves room for imagination; all enhanced by composer and sound designer Layla Phillips’s incidental piano pieces with telling pop fragments from cast, crew and Skuse.
The meleé – AKA wedding feast – and furniture movement are fascinating and slyly comic, from “waiters” Nick McGrory, Marley Isaac Dunn, and Cyan Fernando. Dialect coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley places the company firmly in the Midlands, while intimacy coordinator Shondelle Pratt, although it’s an upwardly mobile working-class wedding, has quite a task. And the same goes for fight choreographer Diego Retamales.
There’s not a weak link in the company, and each actor’s grasp of the play and its demands is unerring. You’ll laugh a lot, and your heartstrings will be plucked. Short season. Don’t miss.
