Constellations on Broadway

How could they leave you hanging Jake!?

***I wrote this letter to the Director of Constellations, currently in preview performances on Broadway, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. It won't really make much sense if you haven't seen the show but I decided to post the letter here as a blog post since I'm (maybe) a tad shy of being obnoxious/delusional enough to actually deliver it.***

12/22/14

Dear Michael,

I saw Constellations at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater this weekend and commend you on your efforts.

I am aware that your His Royal Court production [in London] won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play 2012 and received 4 Olivier nominations. Congratulations.

Your actors are amazing. However, last Saturday night, they did not receive a standing ovation from the audience. Despite their positive fronts, the actors’ disappointment was palpable. I think the disconnect comes from confusion that the play actually ended. The time it seems to take for the audience to digest the ending exceeds the fleeting moments available for applause/recognition. 

You don’t need feedback from a stranger. However, I’m taking the liberty of offering some thoughts as I have nothing to lose, and we live in an age of technology where a reality that you’d actually read this letter seems possible, even if unlikely.

• The lighting work in your play is an exciting and unique visual technique. However, the lighting regularly and frequently goes dark in between the various realities; therefore, it is not immediately clear that the play has ended when the light again goes dark in similar fashion after the final scene. There was a terribly awkward pause between the end of the play and the audience’s realization eventually leading to broken and scattered applause. This can’t be gratifying to your tremendous performers/production which deserves a thunderous ovation. I believe a unique visual (lighting) cue at the end that more clearly signifies the end of the play would be beneficial. 

• It was unclear to me why balloons [making up the set] were falling towards the end of the play. Maybe that’s just fine left as a mystery but I’m not sure if there’s a message that’s meant to be conveyed. It was interesting to note though that Marianne’s character specifically expresses her contempt for being surrounded by balloons when she’s dying and yet the entire stage production is filled with “balloons.” So, the balloons/balloon lighting, as beautiful as they are, seem to be an affront to the character and her experience. The "bursting" of all the balloons, including the “lighting balloons” being retracted to accomplish this effect, combined with the dramatic sound effect of all those balloons popping, could be a special effect that differentiates your penultimate scene from the final scene. These types of theatrics, which would better herald the ending, could be considered unnecessary (and expensive; impractical); but, it would also give Marianne what she wants (in more ways than one). 

• I really appreciated how Jake, through his varied performances, was able to distinguish Roland's proposal scenes. When he receives the news of Marianne's illness (malignant or benign), Roland is comforting, reassuring, relieved (even angry). In the scenes where they discuss her decision to depart, he’s pretty much a restrained constant. It dawned on me that I never witnessed Roland as a tearful, crying, hot mess, or Marianne for that matter, in any scene where they’re confronting Marianne’s illness. This would have been very humanizing and relatable. The lack of more strong emotions leaves a gaping hole in their relationship. The stakes have to be higher and he just seems too cool and she too calculating in every iteration. 

• Marianne is constantly quirky. She is comedic; she is exhilarating; she can also be cold and clinical (like when she is explaining adultery or her illness). That’s her character. If there could be a tad more warmth infused in her, it may help us care more about Roland and Marianne’s fate. She is almost too cold in every version of Roland’s proposal; even when she says yes, it’s more comedic than moving. Subtle performance choices may help the audience get more invested in their fate, to actually hope and root for these characters even as we are offered a multitude of possibilities and should know better. I’d like to see more tenderness, more feeling, more passion – even more physicality for an American production. I’m not saying these characters should be making out on stage; however, there was a distance between them that I’m not sure was wholly covered by the time we get to the end, where I believe we’re supposed to be hoping that they get to share a fate that allows them to be together even if the odds of this are unclear/against them. 

• It works that the actors wore the same outfits throughout the play. However, we never see any even minor changes in their looks. For example, Marianne never lets her hair down. This contributes to a static feeling throughout the play and in the characters despite the passage of time and countless possibilities. Maybe that’s what you want? But changing up things slightly in her (or his look), can help you further differentiate versions of the same scene that start feeling overly repetitive based on dialogue shifts alone. Maybe in one version of the bedroom scene, Marianne could reveal more by removing/unbuttoning an outer layer of her clothing, which could signify a change in her own openness. There may be ways to play around with this and still allow her to return to the status quo for alternate scenes.

• I expect you must strictly stick to Nick Payne’s script. I wish you had flexibility, in particular with respect to Roland’s question to Marianne in the final scene to which Marianne always responds that the seller of his honey just stared. If only Marianne could have answered differently in that final scene to that otherwise unspectacular question – the answer then leaving the audience to wonder if this time things happened differently or to question whether the differences and similarities among scenes reside actually in the characters’ choices about what to reveal to each other.

Congratulations and all the best on your Broadway run.