Review: Constellations: Pole Dancing in the Parallel Universe
Last Sunday emanated from a parallel Universe. Show tickets, the decision to drive to a specific train which had a stop near the theater. The transit website said, “no delays.” Arriving at the train proved otherwise, in fact it seems always to prove otherwise when the site indicates no problems. The platform was mobbed and a train was going out of service. As the clock ticks toward the curtain going up I have to calm myself down. It is either traffic or trains, in New York City you picks your poison.
Finally an E train is rerouted around the clog and if one is lucky, one gets a seat for the half hour ride. But then, it was “Show Time.”
There has always been “show time” in the subways: Mexican Mariachis, Peruvian Flautists, Singing Divas, dancing half-naked men dressed as women, violinists, jazz singers. Show time on the train itself now includes groups of boys with a boom box, or a solo young man, flipping a hat from head to elbow to foot to head and then, as the train continues to move at break neck speed: acrobatics.
The acrobatics include swinging and gyrating up and down the hand rails and poles, likely over many heads. Two groups, then an individual in his late teens with a baseball cap over his dyed orange hair, orange floral pants, backpack with angel wings, entertained me all the way to Manhattan. I was grateful to leave with my teeth.
Finally, at the theater, the play thankfully began a little late. I needed the time to decompress and prepare myself for a unique theatrical experience. Constellations, at The Manhattan Theater Club, Samuel J. Friedman Theater,
The set is balloons, some are lit, some suspended, some at attention. Inevitably they begin to fall.
“in the quantum multiverse, every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”
This extraordinary play by Nick Payne, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson, is a love story presented on a scientific level: it is best described by possibilities, alternative happenstance, molecular biology, the big picture … is is all about the parallel universes in which we may be living.
Brilliant.
The two work beautifully together. Each scene is composed of many shorter scenes that flow seamlessly into one another and are broken by the flash of a strobe onto the white balloons, throwing at the audience the positives, the negatives, the ups, downs, ins and outs of the relationship as it begins and will eventually end.
The incredible seventy-minute long, non-intermission play is constantly in metamorphosis, breaking and reforming, having us wonder about life and death on many levels, the what- if’s constantly permeating then poking us and daring us to figure it all out.
To figure life and love all out.
The New York Times Glowing review came out 1/14/15:
And New York Newsday’s great review came out on 1/14/15 as well.
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Posted NY Times and NY Newsday’s glowing reviews.
Fully entertained and entertaining /:-)
Great blog.