Since Everything Everywhere All At Once, we are all familiar with the multiverse – the idea that all events could have different outcomes in parallel universes. In other words, for every action you take, a different version of ‘you’ might be experiencing the option that you did not choose – and its subsequent outcomes – in another universe.
This idea is explored in Constellations by playwright Nick Payne, a new production by the Sydney Theatre Company starring just two actors – Johnny Carr (Wellmania, Five Bedrooms) as Roland and Catherine Văn-Davies (The Twelve, Hungry Ghosts) as Marianne.
After meeting at a barbeque (or perhaps it was a wedding?) they begin a relationship during which each is unfaithful (depending on which universe you’re in) and either live happily ever after once Roland proposes or endure a far sadder outcome.
As a quantum physicist, Marianne goes to great pains to explain to her beekeeper beau Roland cosmology, quantum mechanics, string theory and the belief that there are multiple universes that pull people’s lives in various directions: “Every choice, every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”
Reflecting her obsession with multiverses, the play itself is structured so that every short scene or vignette from their ‘story’ is repeated a number of times with slight or large adjustments to alter the course of the relationship. With less talented actors, this could become tiresome or boring but the combined skill of Carr and Văn-Davies means the audience’s attention is held at all times.
The play demands a great deal from the two performers as they must literally embody all the highs and lows of a relationship within 70 minutes. One moment they are celebrating with glee a hoped-for medical result; the next they are grieving a feared one.
In a 2020 interview, Catherine Văn-Davies waxed lyrical about her telescope and said she was “obsessed with the universe and the cosmos. There is something deeply humbling and quite freeing to look up and realise you are a tiny part of the universe but you can have a big impact.” Obviously, she was meant to play this role.
Her onstage partner, Johnny Carr is no less impressive and anyone who has seen him as ‘Simmo’ in Five Bedrooms will appreciate this versatile actor’s impressive range.
As the play finished, I felt slightly dissatisfied as its structure meant by definition that we’d never truly know whether Roland and Marianne’s story ended happily or tragically (or even if they ever had a relationship), but the roar of applause and standing ovation from the Opening Night audience gave the cast and crew all the feedback they needed.
One of Marianne’s final lines sums up the play’s raison d’etre: “We have all the time we’ve always had. There’s not going to be any more or less of it once I’ve gone.”
Constellations
Sydney Theatre Company
29 July – 2 September, 2023
sydneytheatre.com.au
