Constellations At The Old Globe Theatre Play Analysis

On April 23, 2016, I went to see the play Constellations at the Old Globe Theatre at Balboa Park. Nick Payne is the writer of this production and it was directed by Richard Seer. This show was 70 minutes long with no intermissions. When walking into the theatre, I did not know what to expect. I did not do any research to find out what this show was about, but, I was still excited to see it. I noticed when entering the theatre that there were small, blue lights hanging off the ceiling and the stage was in the shaped of a hexagon, the resembled a honeycomb. As I was watching the play, I realized that that the playwriting was not in a linear format that we are usually used to seeing in theatre productions and it was confusing and hard to follow
Since each scene was sent in multiple different parallel universes there were different outcomes to how they were resolved. I believe the main conflict that they kept resulting back to was the fact that Marianne was diagnosed with a grade four glioblastoma multiforme in the frontal lobe of her brain and was told that only one third of the people diagnosed with this cancer live for a year. In one alternate universe, she is told that with surgery and a little bit of chemotherapy she would make a full recovery. In another alternate universe, she decides she wants to go abroad and live out the rest of her life. The climax of the play is when Roland and Marianne decided to split up. Marianne admitted to Roland that she was sleeping with someone from work and they had a big fight about it and split
There were no costume changes or any props. There costumes were regular every day, casual style. The set had a very spacey, feel to it. The lighting was slightly dim. I thought it was very effective of creating a sort of multiverse atmosphere. I do believe a few props would have helped better understand what was going on in the play but if you pay attention to just the dialogue, it will all make sense in the end without the need for propr. I though these actors really complimented each other. They had really good chemistry on stage. I felt that thier acting was very believable. In the scenes where the two characters talk about Marianne’s cancer, it is a very emotional scene that involves tears. But, it quickly changes to a more upbeat scene and the actors were able to smoothly transition back and forth between the happy and more emotional scenes. I thought these actors did a phenomenal job in this production of Constellations. I did not recognize who these actors were but they are extremely