Boy meets girl. What will they say? What will they do? Will he leave or will he stay? Will they find happiness? The possibilities are endless.
Literally so, as she would explain to you. For Marianne is a cosmologist studying quantum physics, that mind-boggling science that proposes a multiverse of simultaneous existences in which all things are not only possible but actual.
Nick Payne became the youngest ever winner of the Evening Standard’s best play award in 2012 for Constellations, which cleverly translates this difficult academic concept into the life choices of two young people seeking their own path.
Ever wish you had said something differently, thought later of the correct response, reacted other than you did at the time? Here it is if one had the chance to do so, as short episodes are repeated time after time, each recurrence prompting a different outcome with different consequences.
Apart from being a brilliant concept, the play gives a rare opportunity to showcase two fine actors in top form as they switch with impressive agility between moods in successive interpretations of a single situation—Faye Brookes, best known as Kate Connor in Coronation Street, and Tom Lorcan as her boyfriend Rowland.
The relationship is complex, many-faceted, a series of possibilities or maybe a mixture of some or all of them. There are false steps, inappropriate remarks. Marianne’s jokes fall like a dud rocket; beekeeper Rowland’s idea of a speech leading up to a marriage proposal is all about the sexual habits of his bees. Marianne hugs herself, shrinking in embarrassment.
But then again... she doesn’t, happily so, as all the time one is rooting for this ill-matched couple to find a way through, even when more serious difficulty intrudes later.
Ethan Cheek’s set resembles the entrance to a labyrinth leading to multiple passages, and Hector Murray’s lighting marks and complements the changing emotions. The play, tautly directed by Jessica Daniels, runs to just over an hour with no interval.
I gave a little cheer at the end. For another audience member, it was all very moving as she held her partner in an emotional embrace.