Love is often realised in stages. We yearn for love, find it and fall out of it, and with much uncertainty and excitement, fall deeply into it.

Here lies the premise of Finnegan Kruckemeyer’s Those Who Fall In Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon the Ocean Floor, sifting through the joys and challenges of succumbing to love.

Kruckemeyer’s world is constructed by the rule that time is malleable, turning on the axis of a singular set piece to allow actors Jo Morris, Renee Newman and Ben Mortley to move through five different stories woven together into a shared existence.

Certain stories exist in worlds akin to our own, like the young woman who watches another woman from her car. Young Terri Case learns to hunt animals in the Appalachian Snowfields, under the guidance of her crush Marco. A pan flute instrumental of Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence cues a compelling depiction of a first date at a Japanese restaurant. Drifting into the Cold War, a submarine keeps the love of two women captive, while a Parisian watchmaker possesses a picture of a woman who “was always losing umbrellas, and forever finding pens”.

In the prologue, watchmaker Alain tells us “that time has been elastic all along”. The play’s fantastical ability to control and succumb to time allows a beautiful rewinding and reconstruction of events, giving each character the opportunity to navigate new endings.

In this seamless transferral of time, love finds parallels in its imperfection. Unrequited love at first seems as heartbreaking as we believe it is, until it doesn’t, and the ability to love at all becomes sacred. In an ode to love, and the challenges it brings, you’ll no doubt find yourself in at least one or all of these five worlds.

WHAT: Those Who Fall In Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon The Ocean Floor
WHERE: SBW Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross
WHEN: 20 July – 6 August 2016
HOW MUCH: $30 under 30/concession, $38 full via Griffin Theatre