Nick Payne's two hander has quite the credentials - from its opening at London's Royal Court with Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins in 2012 to a Broadway run with Jake Gyllenhall and Ruth Wilson to a filmed covid version in 2021 with four different pairings, including Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker and a gender shift to pair Russell Tovey and Omari Douglas. It's a tight play exploring a relationship between two people over the course of a number of years - one a beekeeper, one a theoretical physicist - but told in short scenes which play out in variations, reflecting the physicist's belief in multiversal theory. We're also shown fairly quickly where this relationship is heading, with a brutal decline hitting the physicist in her early 40s leading to tragic loss.
Kelly Somes production plays this in the round, on a platform with three chairs, and keeps the protagonists constantly in motion around one another, connecting and disconnecting in moments, and playing the variations quick and smooth. Lucy Goleby and James O'Connell take the challenges and joys inherent in these roles and absolutely own them - bouncing dialogue between them in skilful rallies, finding different spins on repeated lines and rich depths under the words (the way Goleby says the word "Delicious" at one point is luxuriously wonderful). The variations between their essential personas are played with split-second timing, and these are performances that work just as well whether they're directly in front of you or on the opposite side of the platform, as they cycle around and play to all four audience quadrants very effectively.
Aidan Bavinton's lighting design does a lot of work to separate moments and locations, from tight spots to more general washes, and does it very well. Neville Pye and Kelly Somes' sound design delivers sharp blips of sound to separate moments and get us from instant-to-instant in a way that fits perfectly with the material.
This is a polished gem of a show, with all facets shining and reflecting, and something you can delve into over 80 minutes. It's as much a journey of the heart as of the mind, and it's a demonstration of two performers locking in to a text with passion, joy and fervour. Powerful work.
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