Beth Steel's play first opened at the National Theatre's relatively intimate Dorfman auditorium where it received rave reviews. It has now transferred to the West End. Judging by the trailers that have been cropping up on my socials, it's being sold as a raucous, ribald piece about a chaotic, comic, Prosecco-fuelled wedding. It's certainly that, but it's also so much more.

 

The setting is Mansfield as family and friends gather for the impending nuptials. The women are trying on their dresses and squirting hairspray, drinking bubbly and getting, well, bubbly. Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is about to marry Polish immigrant done good Marek (Julian Kostov, last seen in White Lotus) and the future is looking great..

 

But there are tensions about the past plus new tensions about the present. This is a community still feeling the ripple effects of the 1980s miner's dispute which ravaged the area and split families down the middle, scab v striker. Sylvia's dad and her uncle haven't spoken since one of them crossed the picket line. This is just one of a number of undercurrents that are about to come to a head....

 

But before we get to a series of showdowns there are plenty of laughs. Think Victoria Wood. Or Alma's Not Normal with a soapy twist. Steel's dialogue – "sugar tits" – is earthy and funny as well as moving and taut. 

 

Bijan Sheibani directs so that everything and everyone dovetails neatly on a set that has little more than a wedding table and a revolving centre. Everyone in the ensemble has their moment to shine and their own storyline. Hazel (Lucy Black) is dealing with her husband's unemployment, much-married Maggie (Aisling Loftus) is trying to get her messy romantic life sorted.

 

At times the actual wedding (we see everything but the service) almost takes second fiddle. Emotions turn on a sixpence. One minute there is some twerking and a dance to Britney's Toxic, the next the atmosphere really has turned toxic, with anger, rage and accusations spilling out.

 

This is a play that is so full-on it feels very immersive at times, as if you are a wedding guest eavesdropping. And that's just from the stalls. There are also audience seats onstage where you can almost reach out and take a vol-au-vent. There is a downside to those seats though - at one point there is a frantic and comic sex scene and at least one audience member was so close she had to look away. 

 

This is a serious play with plenty of comic moments as it builds to boiling point, such as father Tony (Alan Williams) recreating a youthful Tarzan impression or a pair of Spanx being removed to the great relief of the wearer. But most of the best quips come from Aunty Carol, played by Dorothy Atkinson (familiar to Inside No 9 fans from the Mulberry Close doorbell episode and also a dead ringer for Paula Wilcox from Man About the House). Her performance adds humour throughout, often when the tragedy is too much to bear.

 

Like all the best comedy, whether in stand-up or play, Till the Stars Come Down uses humour to get inside the skin, explore the human condition and interrogate ideas in an accessible way. "Wouldn’t be much of a wedding without a punch-up,” is the conclusion after some fisticuffs. There is certainly plenty of dramatic punch in this formidable play, as well as punchlines.