Review: Brisk, Moving CONSTELLATIONS at Studio

Quantum physics and string theory are recent enough areas of study to still blow the minds of physicists and be a complete mystery to those unfamiliar with the science.

That's the case when Marianne, a frisky young physicist in Nick Payne's play Constellations at Studio, tries to explain it to Roland, a beekeeper she meets at a barbecue.

But at its essence is this: There may be a parallel universe where the same thing is happening with a different outcome. Or to make your head go further kablooey: Multiple realities in worlds described as if they were levels in cable connections: a multiverse.

Tough to comprehend, it becomes easy when it unfolds on stage, where every aspect of this couple's life comes in multiple versions. In most, she approaches him. In one version he mentions a wife, in another, a girlfriend; in yet another, he doesn't say whether he's attached or not. The variations make for a multiplication of possibility and somewhere in the middle of it all, a kind of truth. The action lurches forward, with each variation offering another tidbit of information, or suddenly moving quickly to a calamity at the end of the play, that fleshes out more and more as it gets replayed.

If this sounds, well, repetitive, it never is. Instead, each brief scene is a facet of a glittering diamond; individual as a snowflake.

When Constellations opened on Broadway last year, it boasted a high-profile cast of Jake Gyllenhaal in his Broadway debut and Ruth Wilson, who earned a Tony nomination for the work.

And while the Studio production doesn't offer either the former star of Brokeback Mountain or the Golden Globe winning actress from The Affair, New York imports Lily Balatincz and Tom Patterson are do terrific work as the couple (or couples) so bound up in the other, like planets in the orbit of a constellation.

The already tight confines of the fourth floor Studio X is further intensified by a circular ring of seats so close to the actors you can see them twitch. And these two bring it on with one another; at varying degrees soft, sharp, sexy, saddened, tentative and harsh as each variation plays out. And how exactly do they get all of this straight? It's hard enough for a two person play to remember all of one's lines, but how about a dozen different scenes that start out the same way but veer off differently? How can they recall which version they're in.

Director David Muse keeps their circular cat and mouse game circulating at an almost clockwise. Lighting designer Michael Lincoln who with set designer Debra Booth has created a centerpiece of intersecting strips of light, artistic enough to require a gallery at the new Renwick, that flicks off between scenes, only to light up, slightly changed itself, with a couple of lights in a new color, as the action shifts below, moving around the stage as if on the hands of a dial, ratcheting the tension of possibilities like the tension of a clock (which also affords every corner of the theater an opportunity to see a new angle, or facial shading at each turn).

Presented without an intermission, and with colors of electronic music from sound designer Ryan Rumery, it's a marvelous and often moving super-close examination at the dance one couple goes through, full of tension and release, whose various actions are never random, but always measured possibilities. For Payne, it almost seems like a completely different way to tell a story - fractured, like a living collage, ultimately more intimate and vivid than most everything in theater.

Constellations is told without the usual welcome and pleas to extinguish cell phones; in fact, theatergoers pretty much have to find their own way to the stage - up an elevator and then up another set of stairs, and still one is not told exactly where, when facing a circular wall, one should walk. A stack of multicolored pillows are stacked and available; inside no rules on how or where to sit (which means if you decide to sit back and cross your legs on a platform, nobody will be able to sit behind you). You figure this out as the place fills up and as the human experiment continues in the seats, sometimes people move before the show starts. But if people leave during the action, well you are part of the show suddenly. And unlike the actors in the play, there is no luxury of do-over.

Running time: 80 minutes, no intermission.

CONSTELLATIONS runs through March 6 at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St NW. Call 202-332-2200 or go to studiotheatre.org.

Photo by Igor Dmitry

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