‘INTIMATE EXCHANGES’ PRESENTS A SLICE OF LIVES AT THE OLD GLOBE

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you had accepted a date you refused years before? Would your life have turned out differently?

If you’re a character in Alan Aykborn’s “Intimate Exchanges,” which was scheduled to have its American premiere Thursday night at the Old Globe, the answer is absolutely yes.

To accommodate this difference, several others, and a healthy dollop of chance, Aykborn has constructed eight different plays, each stemming from the same first scene. Like a version of “two roads diverged in a wood” and diverged again and then some, the first scene leads to a possible two scenes, which in turn can lead to another two scenes, which in turn lead to the different plays, each of which can conclude with one of two possible scenes. Which makes it seem more like 16 plays if you want to quibble with the playwright.

It adds up to a dizzying total of 31 scenes and 400 pages, or approximately 12 hours of dialogue.

And if that’s not enough, the instructions call for one actor and one actress to play all the roles: a cynical, hard-drinking school headmaster; his very proper and well-heeled wife; their spirited cleaning girl, and their sometime gardener, among others.

Aykborn himself calls it “theatrical lunacy.”

The Old Globe Theatre will tone down the “lunacy” by presenting just two parts of “Intimate Exchanges”--”A Pageant” and “Affairs in a Tent”--in repertory through May 3.

It seems appropriate that the Globe should be the first American company to get a crack at these 1982 plays of this very popular and prolific Englishman. This will be the Globe’s eighth and ninth Aykborn plays in nine years, including the three bunched up in “The Norman Conquests” trilogy in 1979. The only playwright more frequently on the bill is Will Shakespeare himself.

Craig Noel, the director of these and four of the previous Old Globe Aykborn productions, calls him “one of the most fascinating writers in the contemporary scene.” And over the course of his 30 plays (Aykborn writes one a year and is now holed up in his home in Scarborough, England, working on his 31st), he has carved out a distinctive niche for himself as an acid-tipped recorder of the fragility of modern--and particularly marital--relationships and as a master puzzle maker.

Aykborn first used the technique of variable plots in the 1980 “Sisterly Feelings.” There, two sisters flip a coin to see who will go out with the man they both want. If Abigail wins, the play segues into a scene called “Abigail’s Picnic.” If Dorcas wins, they go into “Dorcas’ Picnic.”

Compare this single choice to the 28 of “Intimate Exchanges,” all of which were presented in the plays’ original production in the Scarborough theater that Aykborn regularly directs.

Noel calls the plays “great fun,” but “diabolic” in the difficulties they pose for the actors, Old Globe veteran Kandis Chappell and William Anton, who had a brief role in the Globe’s recent production of “The Incredibly Famous Willy Rivers.”

Often the actors will get only a few seconds offstage in which to change costumes and personalities. Sometimes two of their characters will have an offstage argument, as when Chappell’s Sylvie is choking Chappell’s Celia.

The biggest problem Chappell says she has in rehearsal is with the subtle differences in phrasing some of the same lines that appear in the parallel but very distinct scenes. “Sometimes, I’m using phrases from the wrong play.”

Anton’s problem is a little different. Occasionally, in rehearsal, he admits, “I’ve popped a line off and waited for someone to answer me, only to find the person I’m waiting for is me.

“Hopefully, I’ll stop doing that.”

Of course, Noel, Chappell and Anton say they delight rather than object to the difficulties. They all see a method to the madness of “Intimate Exchanges,” and the only regret they express is that they are not doing all eight plays.

Why have only two actors play all the parts? According to Noel, “That has to do with the reality that anybody is everybody and that there are many facets to anyone’s personality.”

Noel adds, however, that universal and recognizable as these characters are, people rarely identify with them. “They think, ‘This is like my cousin’ or ‘This is like my father’ . . . They howl with laughter . . . But they never see themselves.”

This may well be the thing that keeps Aykborn’s dark view of warring husbands and wives comic rather than tragic.

It is not surprising that Aykborn, who started out as an actor and has been, for the last 17 years, a director, writes plays that can be an actor’s and director’s ultimate dream--and nightmare.

For Chappell, they provide a goal. “What I’m hoping is that at least one very intelligent person seeing these plays will walk out and say, ‘What do you mean that was one person playing all those parts?’ ”

And to make sure there are no slip-ups, Anton uses little tricks to remind himself and everyone else what play they’re in. If, in his role as the gardener, he lays crazy paving--a stone tile--upstage, they’re heading for “Affairs in a Tent.” If the crazy paving is downstage, the show is “A Pageant.”

This is good to know in case you forget which play you’re seeing. But if you can’t spy where Anton puts the paving, just remember: If the gardener accepts the date with the cleaning girl, you’re in “A Pageant.” If it’s Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, you must be in “Affairs in a Tent.”