American Players Theatre's "Constellations" navigates romance in the multiverse

Aaron R. Conklin, Madison Magazine

In relationships — and life — miniscule choices lead us down unexpected paths. Speak a particular phrase or front an expression and the world opens up, moving everything forward. Say something else or project a different emotion, and everything’s sideways.

Playwright Nick Payne’s “Constellations,” currently on stage at American Players Theatre’s (APT) Touchtone space, explores all the ways a budding relationship between Roland (Casey Hoekstra), a simple beekeeper, and Marianne (Phoebe González), a quantum physicist, could play out. In a multiverse, anything and everything is possible.

And, in the intimate setting of the Touchstone, we see it all play out in rapid, real-time succession.

Brief blips of sound and light are the audience’s (and the actors’) cues that we’ve moved from one timeline to another. In one scene, Roland is dumped. In the next, he’s let down easy. In the next, the shoe’s on the other foot. Sometimes, the difference is in the tiniest of details: a different word or expression, a change in pace or inflection. Sometimes — for example, when a series of scenes tracks Roland’s hilariously clumsy efforts to use his profession to propose to Marianne — it feels like we’re watching the buildup of a mental workshopping.

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