Till the Stars Come Down is a raucous, high-energy melodrama set at a wedding in Hull. The writer, Beth Steel, focuses on three female characters and virtually ignores the men in her story which is just as well because her male characters all talk and act like planks. Her women are full of courage, craziness and fun.

This is a hit. West End, easily Broadway, maybe. Pack your bags, girls

We meet Sylvia, the anxious bride, who fears that her family won’t accept her Polish spouse, Marek. Her sister, Hazel, is facing a romantic crisis because her husband has stopped paying her attention in bed. And sexy Maggie harbours a secret that’s bound to spill out during the drunken festivities. The three shrieking women exchange ribald gags. Maggie remembers an attractive man who ‘looked at me like I was a potato in a famine’. Hazel tries not to laugh too hard in case she wets herself and spoils her finery.

The jabbering women are joined by Aunty Carol, who wears a purple hat the size of a bouncy castle and calls for bucks fizz all round. The decibel levels soar as she treats the girls to a selection of her bons mots. Cheddar, she says, ‘smells like Satan’s armpit’. After the ceremony, the sit-down meal is less frenetic and the script turns into a public information broadcast. We’re given preachy messages about how to think and behave. Our hearts must always be open to migrants such as Marek (even though he informs Sylvia’s family that English workers are lazier than Poles). A male character warns us against eating pork because, he says, pigs are clairvoyant and can foresee their doom when they arrive at the abattoir. A drunken uncle laments the closure of Yorkshire’s collieries in the 1980s but he fails to mention that the miners expected sky-high wages for extracting coal that was available cheaper overseas.

Little mysteries are set forth, elaborated on and resolved with consummate skill

The plot gets more interesting when an illicit embrace is witnessed by a notorious gossip. This device is used three times in all but it doesn’t matter as it keeps the story motoring forward. After the interval, there’s more padding in the shape of drunken horseplay, improvised romantic songs, and an unfunny re-enactment of a Tarzan movie. Never mind. Further infusions of alcohol are taken and the plot gets started again. Playgoers who enjoy the sight of inebriated northerners swearing, screaming, vomiting and punching each other will love the second act. Aunty Carol (Lorraine Ashbourne on sparkling form) distinguishes herself with this item of personal reminiscence: ‘Last time I puked up I wiped my bottom on candy floss.’ On press night she was involved in an unscripted mishap that began with the removal of Hazel’s underwear as the women collapsed during a drunken dance. The pants were tugged clear of Hazel’s ankles and thrown haphazardly into the crowd where they hit Anne-Marie Duff in the face. She shrugged off the incident with a graceful smile. (Best performance of the evening.)

The play concludes with a messy and intriguing twist involving an accusation of sexual assault which may have been invented. A fine ending to a sometimes crass and ill-disciplined show. There was a particular atmosphere at the curtain call which rarely materialises in a theatre. But the signals are impossible to misinterpret. This is a hit. West End, easily. Broadway, maybe. Pack your bags, girls.

Broken Water is another play that focuses on three powerful women. It opens with the characters seated on chairs, telling us what happens as childbirth begins. The women address us individually and although they live on the same street in London they have yet to become friends. This artful script reveals its riches slowly and obliquely, offering hints and half-clues along the way. The questions keep coming. Why does Olive speak so tenderly of her son, David, who seems to have been fathered by a teenage rapist who attacked her in a disused factory? What will happen to Philippa, the publishing executive, who spent 20 years raising three children and who now can’t get a lowly job at an online magazine? And how did young Linda, happily married to a hard-working Cockney, end up with no children at all? These little mysteries are all set forth, elaborated on and resolved with consummate skill.

Some of the details make your heart ache. Olive waggles her hands in the sea and imagines that her son, far away in Canada, can see the ripples in a mountain lake. But he can’t. An unimaginable tragedy swept him out of Olive’s life.

The outstanding performer is Sarah Hadland, as Philippa, the spikey but tender mother of three, who recalls her glory days as a hot-shot yuppie in the 1990s. She has to choose between unemployment and part-time work serving drinks in a café. She takes the waitressing job and loves it despite herself. Like everything in this production, it’s a beautifully judged surprise.