The intimate Vaudeville Theatre on London’s Strand, is currently playing host to Michael Longhurst’s superb revival of Nick Payne’s wonderfully touching 2012 play An apiarist and a cosmologist traverse the bumps of various possible life scenes, played-out in short, snappy parallel universe vignettes. Some are laced with the sort of playful wit and fragile awkwardness of a teenage first date, whilst others are imbued with the restrained but heart rending angst of impending human tragedy.
It’s not a perfect play — and nor does it need to be, for it presents a multitude of slightly different journeys and outcomes, all generously realised by the two on-stage players. This production offers theatregoers 4 pairings of actors during its run (check listings for details). On the night this reviewer attended, Russell Tovey and Omari Douglas added a new and largely successful twist to the play which was originally played out by a man and a woman. This adds a further layer of fluidity to Payne’s vulnerable and enriching tragi-comedy.
