Constellations review, Vaudeville Theatre: Multiple realities collide in this spry and sparkling production

Four different pairs of actors take on Nick Payne’s accomplished 2012 play – which is both a neat dramaturgical device and a savvy business decision

Chris O’Dowd and Anna Maxwell Martin star as one of four couples in ‘Constellations’ (Marc Brenner)

As Marianne, the quantum physicist at the heart of Constellations, puts it to Roland, her beekeeper partner: “In the quantum multiverse, every choice, every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”

Nick Payne’s dizzyingly accomplished 2012 play is, in part, an exploration of how the concept of multiple realities might affect a single romantic relationship. As a result, the Donmar Warehouse’s decision to have four different iterations of the same couple (Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker and Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah earlier in the summer, and currently, Russell Tovey and Omari Douglas and Chris O’Dowd and Anna Maxwell Martin) is both a neat dramaturgical device and a savvy business decision: infinite universes means a multitude of starry casting opportunities, and why book for one couple when you could book for two, or even four? (It is curious, however, that even in the realm of boundless possibilities, the concept of a lesbian couple remains out of bounds.)

Constellations’s ever-shifting form and its mix of science, faith, and love remains as spry and sparkling as it was nine years ago. An infinite set of universes means that scenes are repeated, sometimes with only infinitesimal changes, and often with varying outcomes, but there is always a sense of some unknown determinism nudging Roland and Marianne towards a seemingly inevitable ending – or beginning, depending on how you understand time.