Review: TILL THE STARS COME DOWN showcases Adelaide's top performers at Holden Street Theatres

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A harrowing wedding day.

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Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 30th May 2026.

Holden Street Theatre’s latest offering is the South Australian premiere of the tragi-comic five-act play, a soap opera, Till the Stars Come Down , by Beth Steel , well-directed by newly appointed Director-in-Residence, Nick Fagan. It is another of those dysfunctional family plays, but this family is more dysfunctional than most.

It is performed in the round, on a carpet of Astroturf, with a large, rotating circular section. Furniture and props are handled by the cast, assisted by the stage crew. It is one of those very rare occurrences in England, a hot summer’s day, although, of course, it rains later.

In the East Midlands market town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, once a coal-mining region, before Maggie Thatcher, the Iron Lady, destroyed the industrial north of England, closing many of the mines, Sylvia and Marek, a successful Polish immigrant, are getting married, surrounded by family and friends (a role given to the audience, occasionally acknowledged as though they were wedding guests).

Sylvia is attended by the eldest sister, Hazel, and the middle sister, Maggie, who is no advertisement for the happy state of matrimony, having divorced three husbands. Her widowed father, Tony, is there, along with Hazel’s husband, John and their two children, teenaged Leanne and the younger daughter, Sarah . Also there, are Aunty Carol and Uncle Pete. It is a volatile group but, initially, they are all helping one another to get ready for the wedding. As the day moves on, excessive amounts of alcohol are consumed, and secrets are revealed, the family fragments catastrophically and irredeemably.

Aunty Carol is loud and crass, while Uncle Pete will never reconcile with his brother, Tony, who crossed the picket line during the miners’ strike, almost four decades before. Hazel and John reveal their misogynist views, even refusing the offer of a job with Marek, in spite of John being in desperate need of work. Leanne discovers a secret that changes her life. One crack follows another, each widening the gulf between the members of the family until there is no way back. There is plenty of humour in the early part of this play, but it fades and turns into tragedy, and into outright fury by the end.

Nick Fagan has drawn together a group of some of Adelaide’s finest performers for this production, and crafted a powerful piece of theatre. This is an ensemble piece, with each of the characters given a roughly equal share of the performance, but with each having moments of prominence, such as Marek’s wedding speech, or Carol’s drunken dancing. The alcohol flows early, with Buck’s Fizz passed around the sisters before the wedding, and Polish vodka is dispensed freely to the whole family at the reception. It is a key ingredient in the self-destruction of them all, even fifteen-year-old Leanne, who secretly gets her hands on a vodka bottle.

The only sober person, and the only one not yet indoctrinated by the toxicity within the family, is young Sarah. Millie Fagan gives us a bright, disarming child as Sarah, the only one for whom we might have sympathy, knowing the family in which she will be raised and by whom she will be affected.

Maggie left abruptly after the death of her mother, and has only returned for the wedding, with plans to leave again the next day. Michelle Nightingale gives a very lively reading to the black sheep of the family, the one who lives her life her way. Nightingale’s characterisation embraces that indepence superbly.

Hazel, played by Martha Lott, not only shows her distaste for Marek, but is also unhappy that Sylvia is marrying, having been the unofficial carer for their bereft father since he became a widower. Lott expertly brings rigidity and denial to the role, showing Hazel distraught at losing control of her life and marriage and attempting to pretend that all is well.

Sylvia, is caught in the middle of the growing chaos around her, watching her wedding, which should have been the happiest day of her life, collapse into the worst. Krystal Cave displays this emotional collapse beautifully, from happiness, to disappointment, to intense anger.

Nightingale, Lott, and Cave build intense interactions reflecting the changing and complex relationships between siblings in any family, embracing love, support, jealousy, and conflict, but amplified beyond those within what might be considered normal families. They give a formidable trio of performances, anchoring the production.

Tony is wonderfully portrayed by Brendan Cooney, who builds a carefully crafted sensitivity as a man who cannot move on from his wife’s death. Brant Eustice , in one more of his fine performances as John, Hazel’s husband, creates a man with an inner anger just below the surface, that surfaces bit by bit into full blown anger.

Spencer Scholz, plays Marek, a self-made man who has worked hard, doing all the jobs that nobody else would do, and made his way up to now running his own successful business. In spite of racist jibes from John and Hazel, he offers John a job, which is angrily rejected, and later confronts Sylvia for not defending him against them. Scholz convinces in displaying Marek’s love for Sylvia, and his tolerance as he is trying hard to fit in, wanting to be a part of a family that had already rejected him before even getting to know him, simply because of his nationality and success.

The entitled Aunty Carol is played by Jo St.Clair, getting plenty of laughs with her interfering, moving herself and her reluctant husband to the top table, and throwing in numerous one-liners. Steve Turner carefully negotiates the role of Uncle Pete, letting his long festering anger against Tony emerge, slowly at first, then exploding. It is a well-controlled performance. Laura Lines, as Leanne, does a fine job of displaying that emerging teenage angst, quiet and brooding, before causing chaos of her own making.

Lighting and sound by Harry Ferguson , lighting design by Martin Smith , and costume design by Viki Burrett, all add to the production, and the crew work smoothly and efficiently to keep the pace up.

You only have until next weekend to catch this powerful production, so be quick.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/adelaide/article/Review-TILL-THE-STARS-COME-DOWN-at-The-Studio-Holden-Street-Theatres-20260531)._