There’s a “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons where Homer accidentally turns his toaster into a time machine. Finding himself in dinosaur times, he kills a mosquito, a change to the past which makes (à la the butterfly effect) Ned Flanders unquestioned lord and master in the present. On subsequent trips to the past Homer’s various actions create alternate presents: Bart and Lisa are giants, it rains donuts, Marge and the kids have lizard tongues.
While The Simpsons writing room didn’t care about how/what/whether science underpins their alternate realities, Nick Payne is all about it in Constellations, making us flies on the wall for a select variety of infinite possible realities in the lives of Marianne and Roland.
But Payne’s understanding of the multiverse hypothesis is akin to people who think karma means that whatever good or bad you do to people comes back to you: populist rather than informed by the concept itself. Not necessarily a problem…unless one of your characters is a supposed expert on the subject and delivers a three-minute monolog voicing that populist misconception. Then you’re in a bit of a pickle.
Best, then, to ignore the head and look at the heart of Constellations, which are various versions of Marianne (Jennifer Marks) and Roland (Giovanni Navarro) — some in relationship with each other, some who never hook up. In some of the relationships they’re faithful, in some they cheat. In some there’s a terminal illness, in some the tumor is benign. (Because Payne conceives of the multiverse as yielding all possible realities, there must be versions of Marianne and Roland who never meet, but Payne never shows any of these.)
Because there are no scene changes and switches between alternate realities are separated by only a micro-blackout with a “swoosh” sound effect, Constellations is one hell of a challenge for Marks and Navarro, who are regularly required to deliver identical or nearly identical lines with quite differing intonations. They’re embodying different Mariannes and Rolands in different contexts from one moment to the next, after all, even though Payne clearly wants us to grasp some essence of each that transcends the specifics of any given reality. Marks and Navarro fare well enough on this perilous journey, capably navigating the uneven terrain of how bonded they are emotionally from one universe to the next.
Unfortunately, stilted blocking often trips them up. There are a few marks that must be hit, but otherwise Marks and Navarro would do better to throw out the blocking entirely and let their natural instincts tell them how to move.
Marks’s British accent is also a problem. Sure, Constellations takes place in England (although this has literally no significance), but because Marianne’s Britishness is never mentioned, co-directors Kelsey Weinstein and Adrian Van Der Walk would have done better to consider Marianne an American expat. As it is, with so much shifting context — and shifting Mariannes — informing variations in her dialog delivery, it’s no wonder Marks is unable to keep her accent straight and sometimes loses it entirely. It’s a distraction we don’t need while we’re trying to invest in the constant emotional recalibrations of her performance. (Roland is explicitly American, so Navarro never goes there.)
Constellations is a bit clumsy when it comes to its central conceit, but that doesn’t prevent the cast from finding their footing on emotional ground. If you see the play, focus on that part of this universe.
Constellations at Little Renegade Productions
Times: Friday–Saturday 8:00 p.m.
The show runs through January 18
Cost: $22.22
Details: littlerenegadeproductions.com
Venue: The Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach