Worlds of possibilities
Tangent Theatre’s latest production is a tour de force.

by Jim Donick

Nick Payne’s exquisite one-act play, “Constellations,” is playing at Tangent Theatre’s premises in Tivoli, where it opened on Sept. 28. The Broadway production wowed the critics when it debuted back in 2014. Having now seen it, we understand why.

It would seem it shouldn’t get much simpler for building a play: “boy meets girl.” That would be true if life were so simple. Payne’s “Constellations” takes that basic idea and then reinvents it through the
lens of quantum physics and “string theory.” A frightening idea? Maybe, but in this case exceptionally engaging. The idea is wrapped up in a theory of multiple concurrent realities as well as the thought that things only happen as they do in our reality because every little tiny influence, even a tone of voice, happens exactly as it does. For instance, what might have happened if your father had gotten a flat tire on the way to first meeting your mother? What might have happened to life if my number in the draft lottery all those years ago had been 50 numbers smaller? But, of course, none of those things happened and so life proceeded as it did. But, what if it hadn’t? Or … what if it happened both ways?

Payne’s marvelous script spends its evening replaying the “boy meets girl and falls in love” theme for his characters, Roland and Marianne, exploring any number of possible other ways their relationship and their lives could have developed. We often see the same scene between them replaying but taking a left turn halfway through and coming to an entirely different resolution.

Marianne, the quantum physics student, explains it to Roland by telling him that “everything we’ve ever done and every decision we’ve ever made as well as everything we’ve NEVER done and every decision we’ve never made are out there. There are an infinite number of possibilities and, thus, an infinite number of realities.” Heavy stuff, huh? Maybe, but fascinating, nevertheless.

She takes it a bit further by explaining that we have asked the really big questions about how everything comes together and then asked again. The result was two different answers that seem to contradict one another. Relativity theory covers the big stuff, like the sun and the moon and the stars, while quantum theory explains the world of atoms and molecules and quarks and that sort of thing. For those who have wandered into some of Professor Stephen Hawking’s writings, one might have even heard something about particles that can be
in two different electrical states at once and some sort of theoretical particle that can somehow be in two places at once. It’s all but too much for this poor scribbler, but just enough to find the dramatic possibilities in exploring its reflection in the human sphere.

In “Constellations” the two characters spend 80 minutes showing us a number of the possibilities that could have shaped their falling in love and the differing ways their life together might have played out. The spectrum runs from light joy and happiness in their lives to profound pain. Think of the angel, Clarence, in “It’s a Wonderful Life” showing Jimmy Stewart how life might have developed in his universe of
Bedford Falls with just a few changes in what he chose to do. In “Constellations” that exploration is at a much more intense level of drama, and there’s no probationary angel guide to tell us which one of the realities we might be experiencing now.

One might also think of the script as an exercise in how a playwright considers the myriad of possibilities that his blank sheet of paper promises when he sits down to tell a story. Either way, the result here is an emotional roller coaster and two actors spending the entire production moving from one different level of emotion to another and
then back again or, maybe even deeper into depths of emotion.

We aren’t sure we can imagine a two character play that could demand more from the actors. Having seen Molly Parker Myers and Michael Rhodes pull this one off, we also can’t begin to imagine how difficult
it would be for any other two actors to approach the level of intensity that these two bring to the script. They perform the show on this simplest of sets, a wonderful painting of a spiral nebula in the middle of this theater-in-theround. Simple though it may be, it actually offers profound complexity by placing them firmly in the middle of a nearly infinite cosmos. It’s simple and complex at the same time.

Molly Parker Myers plays Marianne, the physicist and Michael Rhodes provides the role of Roland, a bee keeper. We’ve enjoyed Ms. Parker Myers any number of times in musical comedy roles like the “Drowsy Chaperone.” In “A Little Night Music” she was amazing as Desiree, especially singing “Send in the Clowns.” That said, we’ve never seen her take on such a meaty dramatic role before. But, she doesn’t simply take it on. She consumes it. Mr. Rhodes’ work is likewise wellknown to Hudson Valley audiences, usually in character roles of uncommon complexity.

As Roland in “Constellations” he stretches himself to new heights. At one moment he’s a slightly awkward and goofy kind of guy and in another he’s a deeply caring human helping the love of his life cope with possibly unspeakable tragedy. Half a second later he’s back in the role of the awkward bee keeper who hopes the girl will like him. After pouring so much emotion onto that simple stage for the entire performance we can hardly imagine how these two actors have enough energy left to take their bows at the end much less actually walk upright off of the stage, unassisted.

“Constellations” at the Tangent Theatre’s home in Tivoli is a world-class production that is a must-see for any lover of great theater within a couple of light years distance from this spinning orb that hosts it.

In this case, disappointment is not one of those all-but-infinite number of possibilities that are out there.

See it if you can. It runs through the 22nd.

Jim Donick is an award-winning automotive writer who dabbles from time to time in other topics, including theater and travel. He is the editor of Vintage Sports Car magazine and contributes to a number of publications.

 photo: Cynthia DelConte

Hudson Valley Professional Theater Rocks Tivoli

Constellations comes roaring back to an upstate stage produced by the small, plucky Tangent Theater.

by Wickham Boyle

"Constellations," written by Nick Payne,  bowed at the Royal Court Theater in London in 2012. It then had its American premiere at the Manhattan Theater Club in 2015 staring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. It is roaring back to an upstate stage produced by the small, plucky Tangent Theater.

Tangent, a company founded in 2000, occupies a former Carpentry shop on a back alley in sleepy Tivoli, New York, but their production is anything but somnambulant. You enter the small space with seating for perhaps 50 and discover that for this production there is seating in the round, surrounding a floor painted with a swirling cosmos designed by Caitlynn Barett, so skillfully realized by artist Joel Griffith (who happens to be Tivol's mayor). This is where the two-person play unfolds.

We find Roland, played masterfully by artistic director Michael Rhodes, and Marianne who, as embodied by Molly Parker Myers, spits great dialogue and provides an anchor for the sometimes-complicated work. This is a boy meets girl, sometimes falls in love, sometimes marries, sometimes health overwhelms them, but they keep moving forward.

He is a beekeeper; she is a cosmologist a purveyor of the principles of string theory, relativity, and quantum mechanics. They are perhaps an unlikely pair in a play written in an unusual, Groundhog Day style. This means that many scenes are played repetitively with twists and quirks, little differences designed to show that at any, and every moment in our lives situations could go this way or that.

If I knew more about the scientific theories pursued by Marianne I might be able to discourse on how the paths of stars, or the vibration of the spheres influences and changes the course in our lives, spinning new webs or universe. Or as they refer to in this play "the multi-verse."

What we all can relate to, and this production does much to illuminate this, is that our lives are fragile and going left rather than right, being late for a train, or taking one course of action over another, eventually all strings together to create our lives. If we looked back, regarding our choices, and adjusting them, we might have envisioned or created a different us.

In this 70-minute work, which at times feels like a musical fugue where one trope overlaps another and then reappears slightly morphed, we begin to let go of a linear expectation for a theatrical encounter. This is tough stuff, the lines have to flow and lap like water kissing the shore and this little company has done a great job of presenting an evening that will shake audience members to reevaluate how their lives have come together in lesser and greater ways.