Tender as the night: Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s Constellations

I first heard about Nick Payne’s play Constellations soon after it opened in London in January 2012. If I had been in London a week longer, I probably would have seen it. Hailed variously as “virtuosic, intelligent” and “beautiful,” Constellations is essentially a “boy-meets-girl romantic comedy” which uses a healthy dose of quantum theory to become something quite profound and moving. Presented here by the Darlinghurst Theatre Company in its Sydney premiere, Payne’s Constellations, like Lucy Prebble's The Effect, is intelligent, beautiful, and as tender as the night.

Could happen to anyone: pantsguys & Griffin Independent's On The Shore of the Wide World

First performed in 2005, Simon Stephens’ On The Shore of the Wide World is the story of the Holmes family as they try and negotiate their world, and how they deal with whatever life throws at them. Told across a nine month period, we follow the parents, the children and the grandparents, as they fall in and out of love, as they try to make sense of everything. As produced here, in its Australian premiere production by pantsguys and Griffin Independent, this Laurence Olivier award-winning play is all at once elegant, sprawling and startlingly honest.