Constellations

Or: “O no, it is an ever fixéd mark.”

In the time it takes for you to read this, the universe will have been destroyed and restored a thousand times. In order for things to change, time to progress, and life to exist, the molecules, atoms, and quarks that make up all things must be rearranged into a wholly new configuration. Death and rebirth, tragedy and triumph. Because of this constant shifting and the macro extensions on our consciousness keeps throwing spanners in the works, as we choose this apple over that orange, this lover over that one, the whole tapestry of existence continues to be changed and yet also copied out, (if you want to learn more about how the art of observation, the art of the audience, changes the nature of the Universe, go see Frayn’s Copenhagen.) This is the (admittedly very much watered-down and nowhere near exact) theory of multiple universes, where each of us lives in an infinite number of separate realities where our circumstances, society, even our words, actions, and thoughts are different from what we experience, have done or are in this particular universe. Get it? Got it? Good.

This theory, and what it means for ideas of Choice and Freewill and Fate, lies at the heart of Nick Payne’s Constellations. A story in eight, lightly scrambled, scenes broken down into different chapters (in the Choose Your Own Adventure book of Fate) we follow the possible relationship between Marianne (Tiara Thompson), an astrophysicist at Cambridge, and Roland (Dwayne Blackaller), an urban bee keeper. Beginning with a pick up line about licking elbows and the secret to immortality, we are cast off into the spinning heavens of all the possible beginnings, conclusions, triumphs and travails of their relationship. Each scene is retold for us a number of times, a smorgasbord of what-could-be. Some serves as an end, tragic or triumphant or just sadly ordinary but most roots itself in one Polaris: a moment of choice.

Payne has created both masterwork and monster-mash in Constellations: much of the script is simple loops of the same dialog, slightly tweaked from chapter to chapter either in fact or manner. It’s a terribly difficult device, one not even Tom Stoppard could appropriately master. Yet by putting minerva in the minutia, we are treated to a mosaic of each chapter, enthralling and hilarious, it’s language at once eloquent and dead-on of the London Twirtysomething, adrift in their own thoughts and failing to make connection with each other. Where it becomes a nightmare for the theater attempting it is that Payne gives the words on the page and little more. So it goes that director Tracy Sunderland and her cast become a kind of co-author of the work. Sunderland has outdone herself in charting her own heavens. Using a subtle variation of Bogart’s viewpoints, she has traced the bee dance of Marianne and Roland across the pristine expanse of Dwaine Carver’s set, carefully replicating the bone of each scene so she can lace a new set of muscle and skin over it, a delicate operation made further wondrous by physical leitmotifs; a whisper in the ear, a hunker of desperation, a signature caress of the couple, which endure or adapt in every variation.

This technical precision of Sunderland is coupled to the mighty skills of her actors. Each has taken a separate, though equally thrilling, path to creating what amounts to a series of self-portraits of Roland and Marianne. Blackaller chooses the path of a sculptor. His Roland(s) leap out at us, each difference artfully leaned into, bringing your attention to this unique specimen. Thompson takes the way of the photographer. Setting Marianne against different backgrounds, in different clothes, and the same expression of polite-english suffering, bolstered by wry wit. (It’s worth noting that in the script Marianne get’s more laughs for being a clever phrase-turner, whereas Roland gets more laughs for being a comedic character, falling down as he runs at the wall of his life.) A less flowery way of putting it is that Blackaller totally recreates Roland: dim or sharp, nebbish or gruff, smooth or verklempt, closed-off or caring; we see different, vastly intriguing men trapped in one skin while Thompson is always exploring one Marianne: though her actions, reactions, and even circumstances of birth vary from chapter to chapter, she is still the same woman with the same outlook on life, facing the same choice.

But regardless of their paths and practices Thompson and Blackaller work beautifully together. They have an easy intimacy that they break and reform as each chapter requires. And the most tragic moments of the play are when they are at their happiest and most copacetic. It’s like when Romeo and Juliet is truly done well: the moments of joy are are far more alive, far more painful then the curses and moans of despair, because you know what’s coming, and this present happiness, for us and them, will be but an eye’s blink. Such a skilled pair, in the hands of such fine storyteller as Sunderland, in the waft of such a finely woven play, act like the hands of time: destroys and restores us, destroys and restores us; all while creating a fine and fascinating universe.