Nick Payne’s exquisitely plotted drama Constellations reviewed at Oxford

Constellations at the Old Fire Station, Oxford

From October 24-29

Review by JON LEWIS

Marianne, a physicist at Sussex University meets Roland, a beekeeper. He’s married. He’s single. He’s got a girlfriend. He’s not interested in her. He’s interested in her. She’s not single. And so on with an infinite number of possibilities. Each encounter between the pair in Nick Payne’s exquisitely plotted drama Constellations could lead to any number of possible futures with each trajectory happening in alternative universes. Some encounters are comic, some melodramatic, some traumatic, some disastrous. It’s a fascinating play.

Colin Macnee’s Oxford Theatre Guild production at the Old Fire Station does full justice to the intricacy of the play. Intriguingly, there are two separate casts giving four performances each suggesting even further the parallel worlds created whenever Marianne and Roland make decisions or react to circumstances. Lucy Miles and Cyd Cowley have a magnetic rapport over numerous short scenes, each scene ending in a blackout as their characters disappear into their futures. Whilst their characters are fixed, each Marianne and Roland is subtly different in each universe and the actors are agilely in tune with each variation. Whether the scene is about first love, adultery, break-up, make-up or a renewal of friendship, it’s magical watching the actors make changes in their physicality or their expressions for each universe.

Payne keeps the narrative rooted in everyday experiences. His multiverse does not have three Spider-men from different franchises intruding into the plot. He’s also not trying to be tricksy as in Alan Ackbourn’s Sisterly Feelings where alternative futures happen on the throw of a dice. Instead, the parallel worlds deepen and sharpen the emotional ranges as life’s challenges emerge. We see how difficult it is to find the perfect partner and how easy it is for that perfection to slip by with just a misinterpretation of a shrugged shoulder. Payne suggests with his structure that life’s a lottery. There’s always a chance of suffering from a life-threatening illness, or of becoming a business tycoon, writing a groundbreaking scientific paper or learning the steps of Scottish dances, or not. The drivers of our lives are nature, nurture and chance.

An excellent production.