A refreshingly bare-faced and highly improbable love story. Or is it?
‘Every choice, every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes’. How many choices do we really make, and how much time do we really have? The Old Fire Station arts centre is a cosy black box theatre that, this week, is all dressed up for the Oxford Theatre Guild’s production of Nick Payne’s ‘Constellations’. This groundbreaking play premiered in 2012 at the Royal Court and was praised for its unusual relationship between quantum physics and human connection. Diretor Colin Macnee had a clear vision for his intriguingly simplistic duologue, prioritising small interactions, honouring the beautiful unlikelihood of Marianne and Roland’s varying relationships. Macnee had double cast his production, with two pairs of actors alternating performances, taking Payne’s point to a whole other dimension.
*Slight spoilers ahead*
The thrust stage was minimally set with one block, painted with blueish green ombre, upstage centre, awash with green light, as Marianne (Clare Denton) and Roland (Nathan Golo) take their symmetrical positions downstage left and right. Immediately, we see Macnee has taken an accidental stance on the couple’s first meeting, it is as if they themselves are two lone stars floating in the cosmos. We dive straight in, hilariously in medias res, to Marianne’s ‘fun fact’, why it’s really impossible to lick your elbows, delivered with an awkward friendliness. A few lines in, Roland has politely rejected Marianne’s advance, there is a blackout, we hear a comic ‘boing’, Denton and Golo reset themselves, and the lights come back up. The scene restarts somewhat, but with a whole new perspective. This time, Marianne seems drunk, Roland seems disgusted and the rejection takes a harsh tone. ‘Boing’, blackout, the scene restarts. This interaction varies a few times, from this brutal rejection, to an awkward reveal of his marriage, to the pair hitting it off perfectly. It is the final scenario in which Marianne finds out Roland is a beekeeper, recently out of a relationship and willing to go out again. It is up to us to decide which choice leads where. I thoroughly enjoyed this uncomfortable opening: just two bodies in the space, having multiple slightly different conversations, each one entirely possible. Golo and Denton made bold, clever and uninhibited choices, which contradicted each other and themselves harmoniously, moving me to sympathise with both characters almost immediately. I loved the use of sound effects and appreciated the sharply professional resets from scene to scene. The simplicity of lighting and use of space allowed for ultimate connection between the two actors which only grew stronger as the play progressed.
Denton’s performance was admirable; it is quite a feat to flick through the space-time continuum of a character’s life, and she did so with confidence. She switched seamlessly from naive, awkward, ‘first-meeting’ Marianne, to ‘running out of time’, scared and tired Marianne, in just a few seconds. After a few minutes of finding my feet amongst the plethora of personalities the two actors inhabited, I truly invested in them both. The script has plenty of humour to cut through its heartbreaking fate, and the two actors found most of these beats with ease. I was most amazed in later scenes by the truth in their interactions as Marianne’s health deteriorated. The pair had wonderful chemistry on stage, and each slightly different relationship they took on was dynamic and rounded; evidence of hard and thorough work in rehearsal. They took vulnerability in their stride throughout: once, incredibly touchingly, with sign language, through which they argued over Marianne’s diagnosis in near-silence.
I was captivated, and as the play approached its poignant finale, I found the pace never dropped and energy still filled the space. There was just room for a few tears which didn’t fail to fall as the lights went down for the final time.