Constellations
by Nick Payne
Bawds at The Corpus Playroom
Review by Barry Brown
Once again, the Corpus Playroom gives us an intense L-shaped cockpit onto a riveting two-hander, where Emi Newington and Alisdair Buck play out the complexities of multiple relationships.
In the many characters of different Mariannes and Rolands, they meet and bond/don’t bond depending on their different circumstances, discussing, amongst other things, life, bees, infidelity and ultimately serious illness and death.
The snatches of dialogue for each of these encounters are often very short, sometimes a matter of two sentences, and repeated with different emphasis so that the same words convey very different things. The characters swap this dialogue and elements of it repeat at different stages of the play. They are snippets of possibility, verbal jazz solos. Some are funny, some angry, some sad, and the emotions of the two have to turn on a sixpence. In short, a technical challenge for any actor and one where acting technique could swamp the audience’s belief in them as people.
Here, the two young actors triumphed by keeping their many selves real, achieving very human characters in all sorts of situations with great subtlety and invention. An exceptional skill.
The whole production helped them by paring down direction and set and keeping the pace and movement flowing without undue artifice, both the responsibility of Tom Heald. The mini-scenes were effectively bracketed by atmospherically oceanic sounds (Paul Malpas) and reinforced by the many lighting changes that ranged from gentle warmth to clinical coldness (Lucas Smith).
All are to be congratulated on producing a challenging evening with a largely new team which together enhanced Bawds reputation for high-quality drama.