Thanks to Marvel movies and the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, we’re all a little bit more familiar with the concept of the ‘multiverse’ than we were about a decade ago, when British writer Nick Payne’s two-hander was first staged in Sydney.

Compact and beautifully made, Constellations is made up of moments between two people, Roland and Marianne. He’s a beekeeper, she’s a cosmologist. Their worlds collide at a mutual friend’s barbecue.

But this isn’t your standard apiarist meets scientist rom-com. In Constellations, Payne gives us multiple versions of that first encounter. In some, Roland and Marianne connect. In others, they glance off each other – uninterested in romance or otherwise engaged.

So begins a series of partial (and occasionally more substantial) vignettes representing the infinite possibilities of love afforded (theoretically) in a multiverse in which, Marianne helpfully explains: “every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”

Johnny Carr and Catherine Văn-Davies in Constellations. Photo © Prudence Upton

How’s your quantum mechanics? Your string theory? Can’t be more basic than mine (which  is mostly harvested from Dr Strange, I have to admit). Happily, you...