Note: These are my original reviews of Constellations at the Royal Court and on transfer to the Duke of York’s.  The Donmar Warehouse production opens with four different casts at the Vaudeville in June 2021.

Nick Payne’s latest play for The Royal Court is a two hander on the possibilities of alternative actions and parallel existences. With references to string theory, quantum mechanics and relativity about which your reviewer makes no pretence as to having any comprehension, I was reminded of Charlotte Jones’ play Humble Boy, especially as the male character, Roland (Rafe Spall), is also a beekeeper and the floor of the stage is outlined in a honeycomb pattern.

We first meet Marianne played by Golden Globe award winning actress, Sally Hawkins, at a barbecue and in instant rewinds and replays, Roland changes character and is variously with his girlfriend, his wife, his wife, his girlfriend and the relationship possibilities stop there, until at last, he is unattached and there on his own. Marianne’s chat up line is about one’s inability to lick one’s own elbow and whether, if we could do so, this would reveal the secret of immortality.

So Constellations follows the permutations of Roland and Marianne in their fledgling relationship stopping every couple of pages to take that scene again with differing outcomes and reactions like a devised performance with infinite variables.  Marianne has headaches and starts to lose the words as, in obvious pain, her conversation deconstructs.  She talks science while he talks about sex with her.  She mentions that several outcomes can co-exist simultaneously.  A blip in their relationship brings confessions of infidelity with someone else, or not.  After meeting up again at a ballroom dancing class, a proposal of marriage with its prelude about the role of the three kinds of bees is delivered six (well it felt like six, but was actually three) different ways.

The set is full of white helium balloons in different shapes, each with a dangling white ribbon, a pretty visual reminder of the potential planetary universe. Rafe Spall is mesmerising in all of Roland’s incarnations, gentle, more aggressive, polite, detached, leaving the audience with a spectrum of his character. Sally Hawkins shows depth and intelligence as Marianne and what is so interesting is that we believe in this composite character of differing outcomes.

Michael Longhurst handles these scene changes in universe with lights out and music without confusion or consternation.