‘Constellations’ is back, with a fidgety new geometry
Last time Nick Payne’s Constellations was staged here, by Red Turnip Group in 2015, there were two actors playing the multiverse versions of quantum physicist Marianne and beekeeper Roland.
Now, in a new production by Stages Production Specialists, Inc. with a final weekend run from Nov. 20-22, there are three—Jenny Jamora, Topper Fabregas and Missy Maramara—perpetually pacing and pausing around an illuminated triangle set on the floor stage of The Mirror Studio in Poblacion.
They’re working their way through chunks of dialogue that are happening in the past, in the future, and in multiple variations branching out to infinity.
But the math ain’t mathin’.
“You regret something once,” points out Roland (played, in one moment, by Jamora). “You don’t regret it, and then keep going.”
CONTINUE READING BELOW
Keep going they do. This multiverse seems intent on getting it right.
Roland and Marianne, we gather, met at a barbecue, and their meet-cute is played out as various possibilities around the triangle as the actors take turns occupying each character, then take turns branching into endless variations of their recurring dialogue.
There is a straightforward story in Payne’s play—a couple meets, they become close, they fight and break up, meet again, almost marry, then Marianne gets sick—but the combinations are jumbled over and over until we, the audience, become participants in unraveling the play’s true meaning.
There are conversations about the lifespan of bees; about dwarf stars (“sounds like an online porno search,” quips Roland); about the impossibility of hanging onto language in the face of one’s own disintegration.
But what makes this version of Constellations so special and worth seeing is the interaction of three seasoned actors on a tiny stage that is intimate—as in, you sit four, maybe five feet away from the action. Each wears a sequined black jacket (a nice touch, suggesting the show’s title).
The constant shifting of characters as they deliver similar but subtly shifting dialogue is part of the challenge of Constellations. No actor is limited to gender, personality, or even timeline. Yet everything has to hit with immediacy, and this trio is capable of making it land.
The other thing that lifts this production is the staging and direction by Italian-American Fulbright Specialist Kiara Pipino, who directed Maramara before in The Half Life of Marie Curie at the Doreen Black Box Theater in Areté. Pipino takes a daring approach, not just adding an actor, but revolving her cast around a lit-up triangle that resembles a fidget spinner. The precarious paths the actors take along its vertices allow a full range of physical and visual punctuations. Perpetual movement keeps the play active, the way our brains tend to continually reconfigure things, pacing around each point until we find a right answer, the right turn of phrase.
The UK-set drama involves some Britishisms that play a little funny here in Manila (“arsing”), but eventually we get it; and the short (70-minute) play has multiple payoffs.
Questions arise in Payne’s text: do we only get one shot at life, or are there multiple, or even infinite, possibilities unleashed with every choice we make? And if so, what does the life we are actually living mean? Making philosophy come alive in an endless stream of variations may be Constellations’ best parlor trick.
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Constellations runs Nov. 20-22, 3F The Mirror Studio Theater, Poblacion, Makati City. Tickets available at tinyurl.com/ConstellationsMNL2026 for P1,500 each.
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