Weddings - and funerals - are a lightning rod for heightened family tensions, and here, Beth Steel dials them up to 11, packing bust-ups and belly laughs into two plus hours.
But it's a mark of her tautly-written, acutely observed script that this multi-generational ensemble piece never strays into rusty working class tropes or soap opera.
In a riff on The Three Sisters chafing at their stunted prospects, Hazel, Maggie, and Sylvia, are preparing for Sylvia's wedding to Polish Marek, who arrived in the UK with £80, did "a lot of sh** jobs," and is now doing well for himself.
It's not Russia but a former East Midlands mining town, where the pit has been replaced with vast retail warehouses, a Brexit voting ex red wall kinda place where openly hostile Hazel (Lucy Black) takes her left-behind anger out on in-comers.
"You have to decide if you are a victim or superior," says Marek "you can't be both."
Meanwhile meek, vulnerable Sylvia (Sinead Matthews) has to decide whether to defend her adoring husband from her family, where beaten down dreamer Maggie (Lisa McGrillis, brilliant) is harbouring illicit desires, and a four-decade brotherly feud ensures over who crossed the picket line.
Into the mix comes Lorraine Ashbourne's scene stealing, hilarious, monstrous age-defying Aunt Carol, who just wants to get pissed and dance, and Hazel's troubled teen Leanne (an underused Ruby Stokes) who is the catalyst for a punch up.
Carol has the best one-liners, in a play that combines realism with lyrical, cosmic moments on Samal Blak's revolving circular set, beneath a giant glitter ball. Under Bijan Sheibani's intelligent, imaginative direction, the wrapped around audience is drawn into choreographed scene changes or set pieces, like Marek's wedding speech singalong, and a surprising impression of Tarzan by Derek Riddell's taciturn ex miner.
It's female driven, Matthews, McGrillis and Black superbly capture the knotty sibling bond, but the men also get moments that count - although Marc Wootton's Marek seems more token than rounded, and some of the East Midlands accents are more Happy Valley than Sherwood.
Steel always roots the politics in the personal and while there's a lot going on here she pulls off the theatrical magic trick of making you laugh, cry and think on one big night out.
Till The Stars Come Down runs at The National Theatre until March 16.
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