British playwright Nick Payne’s 2012 play CONSTELLATIONS follows the relationship that develops between Marianne, an astro physicist, and Roland, a beekeeper, who meet at a barbecue.
Payne’s play flit, in a non linear way, back and forth between defining scenes in their relationship. As examples; their nervous steps in to intimacy, their arguments, their respective infidelities.
Director Ian Michael has said that when he first read the play, ‘he fell in love with it, fast’. His production is pared back and stark. Together with his creative team headed by costume and set designer Isabel Hudson, lighting designer Benjamin Brockman, and composer and sound designer James Brown, they come up with a visceral production. This isn’t a show that lulls the audience in, it compels you in, demanding ever closer attention.
Catherine Van-Davies and Johnny Carr give sensitive, well nuanced performances. The quick scene changes demand that they take up different positions and stances around the stage and I wondered sometimes how they achieved this with such poise.
CONSTELLATIONS was the kind of play that left one pondering….Where do we humans fit in, in the scheme of things. There was the science, the physics, that Marianne espoused, most notable being the essential chaos, maybe a better word is randomness, of life. Questions like why do some people become ill and die young, whilst other people can live to venerable old age without not one single health issue? The lottery of living on the Lonely Planet.
This was the kind of macrocosm of the play, but the microcosm of CONSTELLATIONS was, for me, the more interesting. Payne’s play sees each interaction between Marianne and Roland played out in multiple ways.
This got me thinking some thing I had never exactly, precisely, thought of before. A kind of blind spot. It is to do with how delicate our interactions with each other can be. How they can lead to very different results, some perhaps unintended.
Health workers have long preached the importance of mindfulness. After seeing CONSTELLATIONS, I will be much more mindful in my interactions, knowing how much can weigh upon them. Thank you to Nick and thank you to Ian Michael’s team.
Nick Payne’s CONSTELLATIONS is playing Wharf 1 at the Sydney Theatre Company until the 2nd September 2023.
Production photography by Prudence Upton
