For the past year, I’ve been making the same (extremely bad) joke, paraphrasing the hard-boiled koan delivered by Matthew McConaughey‘s Rust Cohle from the first season of True Detective. “Time is a flat tire.”
Constellations is definitely the more downbeat of the two, but seeing them within a couple nights of each other, as I did, reinforced that even if the existence of multiverses can never be proven (we’ll file that under “Things That Are WAY Above My Paygrade”), they’re undeniably fun to ponder. Comforting, too—as long as we stick with the idea that whatever’s happening in the other universes to us right now is better (or at least less mind-numbing) than what’s going on here. (How could it be worse? Don’t ask! Don’t ask!)
Missed Connections
Tai’s central question—how might our lives have changed if we had chosen another path—feels less like an occasion for revisiting old regrets and more like a reminder that somewhere out there, someone else is feeling as you do. Whether that’s comforting right now or not, I can’t say, but at the very least, Missed Connections provides a chance to ponder the simple magic of everyday objects and the adroit warmhearted artistry of a man who knows how to make them feel significant, even over Zoom. I definitely felt less deflated and flat after spending time with Tai. v
Constellations, through 2/28, Fri-Sat 8 PM CST; also Sun 2/28, 3 PM CST, 773-655-7197, theatreatl.org, $15.Missed Connections, Tue, Thu-Fri, and Sun 7 PM CST; Sat 5 and 8 PM CST; Sun 2/14, 5 and 8 PM CST, aredorchidtheatre.org, $25.
