Starry, starry nights as Constellations opens
Sparks fly as a firecracker of love story plays out under fibre optics umbrella
It’s easy to get starry-eyed about the latest offering – Nick Payne’s award-winning Constellations – at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, writes Sue Wilkinson. It dazzled West End audiences with a dizzyingly revolving door cast for the two-hander – which, over four performances, included the pairings of Zoe Wanamaker and Peter Capaldi and Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O’Dowd.
This helped to reinforce one of the play’s themes – that for every single event in our lives there are multiple outcomes.
It also won an Evening Standard theatre award.
Strip the gloss out and what remains – is it really that good? Those who gave the openingnight performance at the Stephen Joseph Theatre a standing ovation thought so.
In essence, Constellations is a love story with reflections on the big questions – including quantum physics and parallel universes thrown in.
The production stars Carla Harrison-Hodge as scientist Marianne and Emilio Iannucci as beekeeper Roland who are directed by the theatre’s artistic director Paul Robinson.
Robinson has choreographed the piece in a contemporary dance style – with the actors at time dancing in close harmony and at others pushing and pulling each other angrily away as a love affair runs its course – the first throes of passion to the recriminations and bitterness of break-up.
Will the course of true love run smoothly and will the couple negotiate moving in together, differences in intellect and expectation, infidelity, jealousy … and terminal illness?
These questions are answered not once but many times – representing Marianne’s view that everything exists simultaneously in the multiverse.
You take the ending that most suits your temperament, beliefs and that you find most satisfying.
Carla Harrison-Hodge’s Marianne is clever, bursting with energy and ideas – and, at times, angry at the condition robbing her of the power of speech, at other times she is philosophical about the outcome and, one time, she is confident it can be overcome.
Emilio Iannucci’s Ronald is a geeky, affable dreamer happy to be caught up in the whirlwind of Marianne’s personality. He is the perfect calm to her storm.
What a ‘play-pen’ designer TK Hay has created for these two characters to present their story and represent this complex and clever play.
The action and actors go round and round in ever-increasing circles on the floor of the Round – enclosed in a prism comprised of more than a mile of fibre optics – made to represent the galaxy, the night sky – infinite space.
The symbolism of the prism is obvious – a prism reflects off multiple images. The same goes for the stars – which reflect the title, put us in mind of starcrossed lovers and the saying: It is written in the stars.
Constellations is not an easy watch with its constant, zippy action and dialogue and complex themes.
Like a meteorite blazing across the sky, it lets loose burning sparks of a love story splintering off in many directions before it fizzles into a cooling ember.
It also wrestles with quantum physics, parallel existences and is anyone in control of their destiny and its direction.
There are some laughs in Constellations but it largely grapples with big questions about reality, time, chance, free will, choice and death.
Constellations can be seen in the Round from now until Saturday November 12.
Tickets are available from the box office on 01723 370541 and online at www.sjt.uk.com