Constellations: A Play

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I do sometimes think: presumably there will come a point where I just don't get stuff on any more. What would I do? Would I be employable at something else?" He might have to look to the multiverse to find out. Climate change is going to destroy the planet, yet I can understand why it's not an issue," Payne says. "If something I do now won't have an impact for 50 years, the problem just is not immediate enough for people to feel they ought to act. I think we're all doomed." It pains him that, because of the New York production of If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, he's had to fly to the US five times this year, breaking a self-imposed five-year ban on air travel. To compensate, on the advice of a climate change specialist he met there, he offset his carbon emissions by becoming vegetarian. Constellations returned last month with the two casts of Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah, and Zoë Wanamaker and Peter Capaldi. Now, it’s the turn of Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey, and Anna Maxwell-Martin and Chris O’Dowd’s to bring a plurality of bodies – refracted through new lenses of race, class, sexuality and age – to Marianne and Roland’s tragic-comic love story.

One evening, Roland and Marianne attend a barbeque. He's a beekeeper, while she's a cosmologist, gazing at the stars in the hopes of planning her future through multiple universes. Together, Roland and Marianne hit it off, but as the topic of infidelity bubbles to the surface, the pair break up. They've got every possible future stretching out in front of them, with each possibility changing up their relationship. Throughout the play, they meet each other in unexpected situations, with Roland at Marianne's side in her final days. The first thing is that so many people keep talking about how totally new this structure is. Except, it isn't. David Ives wrote the mini-play Sure Thing in 1988 and published in in 1994, and then there's the film "Groundhog Day", which was 1993. So, no - not a totally new structural concept. 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. Clearly most people will only see one pairing. But if money’s no object, I’d say it’s worth taking a look at multiple versions. It’s short. And you’re not just getting the same performances with different faces.

Restricted View seats have an impeded view of certain scenes and will be unable to see the entire stage area. Please call Box Office on (02) 9250 1777 with any questions. 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. Recently in Channel 4's It's A Sin, Omari Douglas will return to the London stage, previously in Five Guys Named Moe. He's joined by Russell Tovey, who previously appeared in Angels in America at the National Theatre. Douglas and Tovey are in Constellations on select dates from 30 July - 11 September. This article was amended on 19 May 2022 because an earlier version misspelled Marc Atkinson Borrull’s first name as “Mark”. During the Astronomical Congress of 1928, it was decided to recognize 88 constellations. A description of their agreed-upon boundaries was published at Cambridge, England, in 1930, under the title Céleste .

Where did the constellations come from? The origins of the patterns is not known for certain, though the ancient Chinese and Egyptians are known to have applied symbolic sky maps. Extinct takes to the stage with a smouldering Canada heatwave to bolster its argument. “I have,” Kiran Landa tells the audience in playwright April De Angelis’s monologue, “an hour to convert you to the cause of climate change”. It is an oddly ambiguous statement (are we for or against?), but of course we know what she means. I wish I thought she would succeed. And while a lot of the press seems to focus on the structure and the science bits, really this is a story of two people, and all the possibilities people encounter and even carry within themselves. That's the strength of this play - that and some really fantastic dialogue. But the ending kind of left me, I dunno, cold. I guess it would be how you do it on the stage, but it seemed a bit of a floomp (the sound of a wet towel hitting the floor). I think I expected more once it was all over, but it kind of felt more like a writing exercise than anything else. 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. In 2022 the Hawaiian premiere was produced by the KOA Theater opening June 17th. The show was directed by Kevin Keaveney and starred Chris Jaymes and Eden Lee. [13]In November 2012 Constellations was named the winner of the best play category at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, making the 29-year-old Payne the youngest winner of the award. [4] It also received several nominations at the 2013 Olivier Awards. [5] 2015 Broadway production [ edit ] Play of scenarios in love seeks to bemuse Beijing[1]". www.chinadaily.com.cn . Retrieved 2018-11-01. As heartrending as it is splendid, Constellations tells the story of beekeeper Roland, and quantum physicist Marianne: two (literally) star-crossed lovers whose relationship we see in a series of different ‘what if?’ variations – their joy and heartbreak, their laughter and quarrels, their break-ups and make-ups. The result is a rich, compelling and sensitive love story that reflects on the power of human connection in a seemingly random universe.

Rounding off the four couples are Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O'Dowd, in shows from 6 August - 12 September. Martin's West End credits include King Lear and Consent, both at the National. O'Dowd makes his West End debut in Constellations, previously in the Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men.Payne shows the couple, after a chance social encounter, going through the varying rituals of co-habitation, betrayal and separation. Or, alternatively, they may go their own ways, bump into each other again at a ballroom-dancing class and achieve a possibly durable union. All this is wittily done and played, in Michael Longhurst's Theatre Upstairs production, with great skill by Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins: the scene where Spall obliquely proposes to Hawkins by dwelling on the distinctive types of bees is played in three different ways, and each time produces subtly different reactions. For specific access requirements, please call Box Office on (02) 9250 1777 to book your seats. More info. This venue has additional Covid-19 safety measures in place to ensure the health and well-being of the staff, performers, and guests.

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). 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 This astonishing creation has burst from the imaginations of designer Isabel Hudson and director Ian Michael. It sets us up for a mind-expanding night in the theatre...The characters are engaging, funny and moving” The Sydney Morning Herald Constellations is about the meeting of, and blossoming relationship between, beekeeper Roland and cosmologist Marianne. The latter muses on scientific ideas such as string theory, quantum mechanics and multiple universes, which is interpreted by Payne in the play’s structure as there being infinite possibilities for how your life might go. That means some scenes are played out again, but end in a different way; there isn’t one set direction of travel, and the audience has to figure out the various threads. Which constellations are seasonal depends on your latitude and will change from place to place around the world. From the Earth's extremities the visible sky is fixed. At the Poles all constellations are circumpolar; at the Equator all are seasonal. How can you find constellations?

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