By Helen Musa

There’s a distinct feeling of homecoming surrounding the production of Nick Payne’s 2012 play Constellations, to be staged by Kelly Somes in mid-April.

The two protagonists, Marianne and Roland, will be played respectively by Lucy Goleby and James O’Connell, no strangers to the Canberra theatre scene.

Briefly, the play follows Marianne, a theoretical physicist, and Roland, a beekeeper, who meet at a barbecue and become romantically involved, break up, then run into each other again at a ballroom dancing class and eventually marry. But Marianne begins to forget words and has trouble typing. She is told by her doctor that she has a tumour in her frontal lobe.

Constellations joins Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, Churchill’s A Number and David Auburn’s Proof as plays that explore life through maths and science. Though demanding, it is grist to the mill for this trio, who first met at ANU.

Somes, the founder of Soulart Productions in Melbourne and a former ANU drama tutor who went on to study directing at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Goleby, born at Canberra Hospital, was a familiar face on Canberra’s stages before gaining a place at NIDA, while O’Connell studied at ANU from 2003 to 2009 before going on to the VCA. The pair appeared in many productions together, not least Joe Orton’s farce Loot at ANU.

They have crossed paths many times since, most notably when both secured roles in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, guaranteeing them long-term employment in Melbourne.

Somes, a prolific director who took time out to raise children, now works with young people in the performing arts. It seems more than coincidental that she is staging a play in which one of the central characters is a beekeeper, given that she previously created Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper – and is married to the son of a beekeeper.

O’Connell adds that the last play he appeared in, about Julian Assange, also featured a beekeeper before the character moved into computing. Somes jokes that directing a play with a beekeeper was bound to happen, but says it wasn’t beekeeping that attracted her so much as the uniqueness of Constellations, which she describes as “very intricate”.

Somes, Goleby and O’Connell had been searching for some time for a suitable play to stage in Canberra, and Payne’s 2012 work kept resurfacing. It had previously been seen at Melbourne Theatre Company with Canberra actor Leon Ford in the male role.

“When Constellations was suggested, it just felt right for us,” O’Connell says. “It’s a show about two people who talk to each other – about how people sit in that space.”

He adds that what’s remarkable is how different the two characters are, yet how similar, and how their attraction lies in what they can learn from each other.

Somes says she was drawn to both the grace and the grit of the play. It  may be about people grappling with life, she believes, but it’s also about the sky versus the earth. Marianne, with her head in the universe, talks about cosmology while Roland has his feet firmly planted on the ground.”

It is, they all agree, a sad play, and Somes expects audiences to respond emotionally.

“When Marianne is diagnosed with a brain tumour and we see her life taken away in increments, it’s all the more affecting because she has been such a lively person of the mind,” she says.

The play also explores the loss of language for someone whose life has been defined by it, raising questions such as: what am I prepared to live with? What can I and can’t I be? Payne researched real-life cases, Somes believes, and this is reflected in Roland’s experience of watching Marianne’s decline.

Logistically, rehearsing Constellations has been complex. O’Connell is based in Sydney with his partner, who is six months pregnant, and has been travelling back and forth to Melbourne. Somes says they began with online sessions, working through the script and discussing ideas before coming together in person – O’Connell flying in, Goleby driving from Geelong, and Somes travelling from the Dandenongs, for intensive rehearsals in a Temperance hall.

But the show must go on, and they will be in Canberra by early April for the final countdown.

Constellations, Free-Rain Theatre Company, ACT Hub, Kingston, April 16-25.