Constellations: A Play

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Some historians argue that many of the myths associated with the constellations were invented specifically to help farmers construct an accurate understanding of the sky. From ancient times farmers knew that for most crops, you plant in the spring and harvest in the autumn. Therefore, by ensuring the planting took place at the correct time the risk of a failed harvest was kept to a minimum, particularly in regions where the differentiation between the seasons was slight.

Of the first two pairings of actors (the second two come along next month) it is immediately obvious that Atim/Jeremiah make the most sense. Payne’s play – which follows Marianne and Roland’s relationship from beginning to end via the presentation of multiple permutations of key moments in their relationship – was clearly written with its protagonists intended to be under-40. Marianne explicitly states that that’s her age at one point. And everything about their behaviour and the social world they inhabit screams ‘middle youth’. A major part of the pull of seeing two stagings of Constellations on the same day is the difference between each cast - in that respect, the play also subtextually dramatises the infinity of choices that govern how a play is realised on stage. Douglas and Tovey’s kinetic performances have the edge here. They share a naturally playful, even-handed chemistry that breezes adroitly through razor-sharp comic timing and the abrupt changes of scene that dramatise Payne’s stage direction in the script “an indented rule indicates a change in universe”. Tovey’s rap-inflected romantic monologue about the sex life of bees is truly something special to experience.By contrast, Capaldi and Wanamaker start from the position of ringing a bit false. They’re far older than the characters, which isn’t a big deal, but it’s a dissonance amped up by Capaldi playing Roland as a sort of twitchy, gurning, eccentric uncle type. I can absolutely understand why he didn’t just go with the flow on Roland, but while often highly amusing, he just comes across as too weird for the eventually tragic relationship to be truly touching, especially because he somewhat drowns out Wanamaker’s more straitlaced Marianne. In Marvel’s multiversal TV show ‘Loki’, there’s a version of the eponymous hero who is a crocodile – great fun, but too bizarre to actually be the ‘proper’ version of Loki. Capaldi isn’t quite that out there. But he explicitly feels like a Roland Variant, not the real deal. A fascinating experiment, though, and his ‘Doctor Who’-begat fans will doubtless lap up the goofing. Today, we know any relationship to be purely superficial, since their positions are only relative to the position from which they are viewed from Earth. There are some exceptions however; for example most of the bright stars of the Big Dipper travel together, forming an open star cluster.

Purcell, Carey. "Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson Explore 'Constellations' on Broadway" playbill.com, 16 December 2014 Constellations stars Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah (18 June – 1 August), Peter Capaldi and Zo ë Wanamaker (23 June – 24 July), Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey (30 July – 11 September), and Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O’Dowd (6 August – 12 September). As the relative position of the Sun alters as Earth revolves around the Sun, so different constellations become visible in different parts of the night sky. For example, Scorpius is only visible in the Northern Hemisphere's evening sky during the summer. Listen to me, listen to me. The basic laws of physics—the b-basic laws of physics don’t have a past and a present. Time is irrelevant at the level of a-atoms and molecules. It’s symmetrical

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Peter Capaldi and Zoë Wanamaker, ‘the more self-aware couple’ in Constellations. Photograph: Marc Brenner

Constellations tells of a beekeeper and cosmologist, who through their romantic relationship believe that multiple forces are at work. After a world premiere at the Royal Court starring Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins, the play transferred to the Duke of York's in 2012. In November 2022 a production was staged at The Garage, Bangkok by the Bangkok Community Theatre, featuring Nicholas Burnham and Fiona Haque, directed by Danny Wall. The production took place at ‘The Garage’ in Bangkok, Thailand. In the same month, the play was also presented at The Pegg Studio in Bristol by Bristol Drama Society, featuring Elsa Cleaver, Andrew Graham, Honey Gawn-Hopkins & Lilly Walker. The production was directed by Holly Bancroft and Kate Hunter.The floor of the stage is faintly patterned like a honeycomb; above it float white, blue and grey balloons. Like everything else here, they are changeable: made heavy or transparent by Lee Curran’s lighting, they look sometimes like clouds, sometimes like clusters of cells, sometimes like ghostly partygoers. It’s a setting that wires you into the play without being dully literal. As we think of bringing some life to our mostly hideous sculptures and other public art, we might look to stage designers again – as we did to Tom Piper and his poppies on the centenary of the first world war – to learn how a subject can be illuminated, not merely represented. Always, the very idea of time is beaten up as we watch alternative versions of the same moment And what about Tovey? Is he happy with how things are? He’s spoken in the past about frequently feeling too young for the task at hand. As 40 approaches, can he shake off a bit of the boy in him? “I’m always someone that, if something makes me feel uncomfortable, I push through it and then I sort of catch up … But when it comes to me now, I feel the most settled and the most calm I’ve been for a long, long time. Definitely.” The play follows Roland, a beekeeper, and Marianne, a physicist, through their romantic relationship. Marianne often waxes poetic about cosmology, quantum mechanics, string theory and the belief that there are multiple universes that pull people's lives in various directions. This is reflected in the play's structure as brief scenes are repeated, often with different outcomes.