This UK play is fierce, funny and uncomfortably familiar. Did anyone say ‘Hanson’

THEATRE
Until the Stars Fall
KXT, Ultimo on Broadway
From 1 April to 11 April
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
★★★★½

Three sisters gather for the youngest’s wedding. Add a potty-mouthed aunt, awkward conversations, and a wardrobe malfunction, and then marinate it in vodka.

The plot feels familiar, but what takes it far beyond predictability is how it hilariously yet gently intertwines the lives of ordinary people with fault lines like class, family, politics, immigration and climate change. And all this without the slightest whiff of didacticism.

A drama revolving around three sisters inevitably evokes Chekhov. Three Sisters. But this is not three cultured landed gentry living in the isolated backwaters of the countryside, but three passionate working-class white women living in a hollow former mining town in England’s east Midlands.

There they laugh, dance, fight, get drunk, get horny, tear each other apart and dance some more. The title is taken from a line in WH Auden’s poem. Echo of Death.

A raucous, scattered and clever work by British playwright Beth Steel.

Steel took advantage of the area under her heel where she grew up, the daughter of a miner. His hometown was rocked by colliery closures in the mid-1980s and he voted overwhelmingly for Brexit a decade ago.

But all this creates bubbles in the background. This play in 2024 opens among curlers, hairspray and teacups, while the bride-to-be is getting ready with the help of sisters Sylvia (Imogen Sage), Hazel (Ainslie McGlynn) and Maggie (Jane Angharad).

Sylvia marries Marek (Zoran Jevtic), a once-broke, now-successful Polish immigrant.

Hazel jokes: “Polish… it’s not a language, it’s a Wi-Fi password. Just Z’s and W’s.” His casual racism soon becomes more obvious.

The first act of this ensemble piece introduces the sisters and their incredibly salty Aunt Carol (Jo Briant).

The men are a far cry from the self-taught Marek. The sisters’ father Tony (Peter Eyers), estranged brother Pete (Brendan Miles), and Hazel’s husband John (James Smithers) are all on the scrap heap.

Some stubbornly cling to the past. Instead of toasting the newlyweds, Pete recites the names of long-closed pits like a spell from the dead.

Hazel’s growing resentment is aimed at immigrants, whom she accuses of taking jobs.

While the game’s setting is as specific as the accents (which tend to slip), the issues plaguing this family are not. A community where job opportunities are disappearing and resentment towards immigrants is growing; We might be in Hanson country.

Sharply directed by Anthony Skuse, the leading ladies give strong performances. As the bride Sylvia, Sage belatedly stands up to McGlynn’s bigoted and bitter Hazel. Angharad stands out as the conflicted Maggie, who has four marriages behind her.

Briant’s Aunt Carol delivers the lion’s share of the one-liners, expertly blending humor and astute observations.

Marek from Jevtic made the most of his role. Peter Eyes’ Tony showed great affection in his moving scene with his grandson.

Part soap opera, part tragedy, this lively production is hilariously full of flesh-and-blood characters struggling painfully for a future in a rapidly changing world.

MUSIC
It’s dark behind me
Apex Community
ACO at the Pier, April 1
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★

Gyorgy Ligeti’s music became famous for the ethereal, weightless passages in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Audiences in the concert hall who were scratching their heads at atonal music without melody or fingerable rhythm now suddenly understood this music in the cold of interstellar space.

This was two years before his Chamber Concerto (1970), the culmination of the innovations he developed after fleeing Hungary in the 1960s and encountering European modernism. As the final work of Ensemble Apex’s concert of diverse and intriguing sonoristic soundscapes under conductor Sam Weller, it was in some ways both the culmination and the forerunner.

Shaking Rapidly This work by German-Austrian composer Brigitta Muntendorf dealt with unpredictable fragmented impulses and shaky repetition in an ensemble of six instruments; It varied between hesitant murmurs and fragmented rumblings that became frightening and frantic at times.

Against this, January months, Australian-born, UK-based Lisa Illian explores sun-soaked dry, dense and spare sounds. Evoking memories of childhood summers in Queensland, the work began with an undulating, silent, wailing figure, keeping emotion and sweetness at a distance to create a sense of presence enlivened by bright moments.

Hrim Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir had a different tone, starting with slightly humming woodwinds and foggy, restless tremelos. Sustained passages of high and low notes created a sense of depth and dark color, punctuated by sudden highs and fading subtleties.

Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto began with sinuous textures in the wind instruments, quickly evolving into rustling sounds in the string instruments. A short accented harmony melody appears and disappears as quickly as it appears. The second movement focused on more sustained sounds; The warmth from the wind instruments and prominent octave chords evoked a quiet stillness. Impressively controlled by Weller and the ensemble, the third movement revealed Ligeti’s fascination with mechanical tick-tock textures (for which he is famous). poetry symphony for 100 metronomes).

In the final movement, some of Ligeti’s spirit and humor shine through briefly as members of the troupe take the stage in short cadences, enthusiastically petting off-leash dogs. The movement ended with a sarcastic sideways glance.

This was a special concentration program of Ensemble Apex that made thoughtful connections across countries and generations, as if the promises of the post-war avant-garde were finally being fulfilled by the up-and-coming composers of our own time.