Constellations

After seeing Nick Payne’s Constellations at the American Theater of Actors, I have nothing but the deepest respect for the actors and directors who decide to tackle this interesting, tricky, and often poignant script. Working in the theory of a multiverse wherein every choice we make or don’t make all exist simultaneously in different parallel universes with different parallel versions of ourselves, the play presents a series of snapshots in the lives of two people as their relationship plays out in different ways across these different universes. Some are very similar, others vastly different. Some of these scenes are short, some longer, some sad, some joyful, a couple of brief moments terrifying, but it all amounts to an incredible challenge for the performers and a powerful journey for the audience.

Alex Benjamin and Derrien Kellum play Roland and Marianne. They have the difficult job of spending an hour and a half quickly going between different moments in rapid succession making them change in an instant their mood, their circumstances, their relationship and feelings towards the other, even their level of sobriety. The script often repeats significant chunks of dialogue, a challenge for memorization but a thrill to show rbe way how we say a word or a sentence can completely change its meaning. With the help of director Michael Grenham’s staging, they do a solid job conveying those distinctions to help us quickly read where each character is at in any given moment. They have to show countless versions of these characters. Interestingly, Kellum’s Marianne seemed to have a more consistent base core while Benjamin’s Roland seemed to swing to greater extremes. This seemed present in the script besides any acting or directorial choices. I applaud them and Grenham for their work creating such clear versions of these people on stage and their work diving into what the differences and the similarities between these different versions might be.

Grenham deserves full credit as well for finding such strong through lines for each scene and the show as a whole when the script itself by design presents the same words, the same moments, multiple times with things always just out of joint. The design team did a fantastic job as well. Malena Logan’s set is simplistic by necessity, but functions well but even more to the point it’s brought to life by the paint job covering the walls and floor in night sky hues and the fairy lights strung like stars. It’s complimented and brought out beautifully by Jordan Barnett’s lights, which apart from shaping the playing space well are absolutely dynamic in scene transitions. Robert A. K. Gonyo’s sound design rounds out the world with lively ambiance and jolting scene shifts. 

Constellations gives a poignant look at the different paths life can take, and the way we view the time we’re given. Sometimes the best and most honest way we can look at these big and challenging questions is to look just at a single thread, one piece of the puzzle – and a single relationship is often the clearest view we get of that.

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