“Constellations”: My FT Review
The Financial Times has posted my review of “Constellations,” a new play by Nick Payne that has opened on Broadway with Ruth Wilson and Jake Gyllenhaal: ‘“Time is an illusion†reads a programme note for “Constellations,” the play that has just opened on Broadway in a joint production of Manhattan Theatre Club and The Royal Court Theatre. Is such post-Einsteinian knowledge a torture or a consolation? Payne’s exploration of this question was acclaimed three years ago at its London premiere, and deserves equally high praise for its Broadway debut, again directed by Michael Longhurst.
‘Over a raised-platform playing area hang dozens of white balloons, suggesting everything from the gigantic (stars) to the infinitesimal (particles) as well as sexual attraction (spermatozoa) and the closed-off world shared by two lovers (bubbles). All such possibilities apply to Payne’s story: a theoretical physicist, portrayed by Wilson, spouts quantum mechanics, while the practical biologist — beekeeper, more exactly — portrayed by Gyllenhaal, speaks of the mating habits of insects.
‘The pleasure of the evening lies in the way it is both eminently sensible and completely nonsensical. Details accumulate sufficiently to explain character and plot, while throwing us so off-guard as to make questions of narrative moot.
‘The physicist, Marianne, dressed in feminine rose, meets the beekeeper Roland, attired in masculine blue, at a barbecue. Or does she? Each segment of the story is replayed several times, indicating that we live in a multiverse, where notions of singular time are redundant, while we must endure the routine of daily life, where split-second differences in timing can spell connection or loneliness.
‘Summarising the play’s incidents — a ballroom-dance class, the treatment for an illness — is nearly superfluous. And the central device, as if Groundhog Day had been written by a fledgling Tom Stoppard, would grow tedious if Payne had not kept the drama to a brief 70 minutes.
‘Even in its commendable brevity the production occasionally feels like an extended acting-class exercise. Wilson and Gyllenhaal are tasked with showing us how the slightest shift in emphasis can alter a line’s meaning. Wilson has the more commanding stage technique while the approach of Gyllenhaal is more halting and affectionate. Their chemistry is palpable.’
