“Consolation Street?” queries taxi-driver Frank (Rob Monteiro) in the second of the four monologues that make up what he, a second later, decides to call his heading instead. “Constellation Street”, he proclaims, then sweeps the audience into his taxi (metaphorically – we’d already been thoroughly PVA’ed to our seats by Betty Blythe’s landlady ‘Ruth’). This misheard direction contains within it everything you need to know about CUADC’s latest offering. Set in Cardiff, Matthew Bulgo’s play hinges upon mistaking suffering for something more. Scorned by her great love, Ruth fools herself into thinking doing good guarantees good in return. Frank plays out the usual oversharing banter of a cab before it turns into something darker. Stephen (Theo Francis) rescues a young girl off the street, atoning for a deed we cannot quite discern, at least not at first. Finally, wandering teen Alex (Jules Coyle) pulls the cord between these stories tight. Whether it stays tight or snaps, I’ll leave you to see for yourselves.

"Let yourself be swept into Bulgo’s beautifully warped world with Blythe, Monteiro, Francis, and Coyle." 

Constellation Street is paired to the bone. Director and set designer Harriet Haylock keeps every element minimal, so we have no choice but to cling to the four characters and hope they don’t shake us off. The four actors work well together too. They might never share the stage, a fact that only highlights their all-encompassing isolation, but you wouldn’t know it. The baton is deftly passed from one performer to another. Blythe’s chirpy melancholy gives way to Monteiro’s equally chummy and terrifying turn as the frenetic Frank. They even carve out space for characters who will never make an appearance. It’s no mean feat to give an entire, nuanced character arc to someone who never appears onstage, but the Constellation Street quartet do just that. The way Bulgo’s writing and Monteiro’s performance dovetail in the story of Frank’s son, Tommy, made him a genuine candidate for the play’s most compelling character. Coyle, too, rendered the mother and father of her character, Alex, in horrific, eye-watering detail (no spoilers, except this: jeez). Most of the time, I was hardly sure what was real. Each character’s not-quite-there way of interacting with the unseen observer, and the way they seemed to fall back into their stories, ready to go from the start again as soon as they were over, kept everything hazy, undefined. I kept waiting for Godot to show up.

"Most of the time, I was hardly sure what was real." 

The change of location demanded by each monologue requires a complete reupholstering – not an easy feat in Corpus Playroom. When the show was first performed at the Other Room in Cardiff, designer Amy Jane Cook created four different sets through which the audience had to walk. Then again, these poor audiences only saw three out of the four monologues, so I still feel like I came out on top. I can’t imagine missing out on the reassuringly timorous quality of Francis’ Stephen, or the genius move from Coyle to play Alex’s brashness as a kind of vulnerability. When they do happen, the scene changes are clunky, it’s true. Yet sound designer Evie Chandler has turned these slow, thump-filled interludes into a boon via the stylings of BBC Radio Wales, messily cut with static-y songs. There’s very little in the way of sound design in the monologues (after all, we can never be sure how much of them are happening in the characters’ minds), but what is there works smoothly to get this place ‘in our blood’, as Frank would say. This goes for the whole production. I can’t deny, I kept looking at the sign above Frank’s head, wondering what a TACSI was, before realising it’s Welsh for ‘taxi’ (it really shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did).

"This is a play that’s rough around the edges by nature."

We really should talk about the elephant (or dragon) in the room: the accents. Now, I have no ear for accents, and even I noticed a few lapses. To be honest, when Frank talks about Constellation Street getting in his blood, I assumed he was talking about some rare disease that makes a Cardiff local sound like they’ve just stepped offstage at the Globe. Blythe loses her grip on Ruth’s maternal timbre a few times. Monteiro is especially dicey. I can’t say I blame him. The shifts in the energy of his performance took my breath away; I can only imagine what they did to him. Admittedly, when the accents are there (and for the most part, they are), they’re great stuff. Accent coaches Eirlys Lovell-Jones and Will Jonas deserve the Cambridge theatre equivalent of a pay rise. It’s a similar conundrum that faces the set changes: this is a play that’s rough around the edges by nature.

My advice: don’t fret about it. Just see it. Let yourself be swept into Bulgo’s beautifully warped world with Blythe, Monteiro, Francis, and Coyle, as your more-than-capable (if not entirely Welsh-sounding) guides.

Constellation Street is on at 7pm from Tuesday 13th to Saturday 17th February at the Corpus Playroom.