Constellations

Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, Brighton, Tuesday, June 30, to Saturday, July 4

THE theory of the multiverse, or parallel universe, suggests that there are infinite versions of the universe where all different possibilities exist - including the one we know.

It’s a theory which is hotly debated across the scientific world, and is something which writer Nick Payne tried to encapsulate in his Royal Court play Constellations.

Following the story of a beekeeper and a Sussex cosmologist who meet at a barbecue, over the course of an hour Payne explores the various possible routes their romance could take, determinate on factors ranging from their initial relationship status, to the words they use and the tones they adopt talking to each other.

Having started life in the Royal Court with Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins as the two central characters, it has since crossed the pond with Jake Gyllenhall and Ruth Wilson playing the roles on Broadway.

This touring version stars Sherlock’s Louise Brealey and Joe Armstrong of The Village, under the direction of Michael Longhurst who has been with the production throughout.

Appropriately enough Payne admits the play could have been very different if he’d followed his original plan to write about bee-keeping.

“I had read a book about colony collapse and disorder, with bees dying out in large numbers,” he says. “I had contacted Steve Benbow from the London Honey Company, talked about how he looked after bees and tried his honey, but I couldn’t work out how to make the bees work on stage.”

Around the same time Payne saw The Elegant Universe, a documentary by US theoretical physician Brian Greene, which explored the concept of multiverses. Payne came up with the idea of mashing the two ideas together in the characters of Roland and Marianne.

“I thought the idea was so big to grapple with I wanted to reduce the elements to a bare minimum,” he says. “I worked out what I needed to tell the story, and ended up with just two people with by and large nothing else on stage. I wanted to write something really theatrical, where you have to be in the room with it to work. The audience put in everything themselves.”

For this reason a proposed film version of the play never happened.

“Film is a medium of realism,” says Payne. “You would lose some of the wonder, the fun and the playfulness. In one universe a character becomes very ill – and to create the reality of that you would have to show the effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy on the body. Once you’ve seen that on screen you are taken to an entirely different place.”

Assisting in the creation of the play was Sussex-based cosmologist Kathy Romer, who Payne met as part of his research process.

“She did a lot of fact-checking to make sure what the characters talk about in the play is accurate,” says Payne. “The XMM Cluster Survey which she worked on gets a mention in the story.”

Payne admits the play does get darker as it goes on.

“When I started writing it I liked the idea of time travel from being a kid watching Back To The Future or Quantum Leap,” he says.

“As I went on I found it quite bleak. It felt that time is quite deterministic in that everything that is going to happen has happened, and there is nothing I can do to change it. I am stuck in one universe, and I can never experience those others. You can’t travel to one, or reach across to another. It’s a tantalising idea. Science doesn’t deliver meaning – it gives you the facts.”

In exploring the concept Payne did create other worlds which never made it to the stage.

“There was a universe which got entirely cut where they talked about having children,” he says.

“I wanted to cover every key life stage in a 30-something relationship: first meeting, first date, break-up, getting back together, proposing, and then in my head having children was next.

“There was a universe where they did it entirely in Italian too – but that got cut before I could send it to anyone!”

* Following this tour Constellations will transfer to London's Trafalgar Studios for a limited three-week run.

Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm matinees Thurs and Sat, tickets from £10. Call 08448 717650.