Having gorged themselves on six hours of Tom Stoppard’s “The Coast of Utopia” earlier this year, New York theatergoers with a particular fetish for monumental British play cycles may think it’s safe to rest for the summer. But they’d be wrong eight — no, make that 16 — times over. Mr. Stoppard’s fellow countryman, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, is in town with a revival of his epic 1982 work, “Intimate Exchanges,” a cycle of eight plays that opens at 59E59 Theater on Thursday. And if one of the cycle’s major themes is the endless uncertainties of life’s twists and turns, two things are for sure: You should pay attention to the flowchart in the theater’s lobby, and think twice the next time you feel an urge to light up a cigarette.

At first glance, Mr. Ayckbourn, 68, who suffered a stroke last year and who will have held the title of artistic director at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough for 36 years when he steps down from the post next year, might not seem up for the taxing challenge of co-directing, with Tim Luscombe, the cycle’s revival. So why did the playwright/director take on such a mammoth project? “Because it was there,” Mr. Ayckbourn said recently in his Midtown hotel room, all smiles. “I realized having written and directed it first time around in its entirety that the chances of it ever being done again were remote,” he said. “And I thought I’d like one last shot at it.”

As all Ayckbourn aficionados (and there are legions) know, “Intimate Exchanges” is notorious for its structural conceit. All eight plays begin with a character deciding whether to light up a cigarette. One choice leads to a scene on one evening, the other leads to another scene on another evening. Each subsequent scene also ends in choices — more consequential each time — which again branch out into two possibilities. These permutations embody increasingly longer time lapses between scenes — five days later, five weeks, five years — and eventually generate a network of 8 possible plays, each with an alternate coda. The actors know in advance precisely which version they are performing on any given evening. But that aforementioned flowchart is essential for theatergoers who plan on purchasing tickets for more than one evening, for they may unwittingly find themselves watching two plays that share a virtually identical first act or that share just the first half of the first act. It’s a safe rule of thumb to say that the further apart any two plays are on the flow chart, the less similar they will be.

Such complexity is nothing new for Mr. Ayckbourn. Over a stunningly prolific career consisting of 70 plays, he has often tinkered with theatrical time and space. His 1973 trilogy “The Norman Conquests” (a superb TV version of which put Tom Conti on the map for many Americans) told the story of one weekend in three different parts of the same house. A quarter century later, both “House” and “Garden” (1999) followed suit: The plays were performed simultaneously by the same cast in two different auditoriums for two different audiences. As in those works, the structure of “Intimate Exchanges” transcends theatrical gimmickry. With its intersecting network of ordinary couples trying to sort out their marital fidelities and infidelities, the plays explore the theme of causality and its relation to human history.

“One looks at one’s life and thinks, ‘How on earth did it ever come to this? That decision happened completely spur of the moment! Why on earth did I decide to do [it]?'” Mr. Ayckbourn said. “There’s that slightly clichéd phrase ‘You make your own luck,’ but I think you can choose your own luck as well.”

And there’s one more theatrical sleight of hand: All 10 roles are played by only two actors, Bill Champion and Claudia Elmhirst. Again, the conceit transcends mere cleverness. The actors’ skillful and hilarious rushing in and out and split-second character shifts underscore the notion that deliberate human choice can only partially tame the cosmic chaos out there, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart.

And the heart, not the chaos, is ultimately Mr. Ayckbourn’s focus. The plays chart the variable romantic fates of their characters with the playwright’s characteristic mix of high comedy and heartbreaking pathos. “I was always aiming to write a painfully funny play that was also extremely serious,” the playwright explained.

Alas, the heart can be a dark place, and it’s no accident that all 16 permutations of “Intimate Exchanges” wind up in a church graveyard. In these short codas, the audience is finally privy to the longer-range results of the characters’ choices. And in more instances than not, the outcomes strike a decidedly melancholic note, with a vague, aching loneliness often prevailing.

“You read about people’s lives,” Mr. Ayckbourn said, “And you think ‘That guy would have had a fantastic life,’ and then you read he’s retired into some strange place and lived with someone whom he’s argued with and who left him, and he died alone. And you think, ‘How extraordinary that out of that gregarious life …'” Mr. Ayckbourn’s voice trailed off, before continuing on. “I think there is an innate loneliness in all of us. All you can do when you write is to mine yourself,” he said. “My nightmare is to be psychoanalyzed because that will straighten me out, and all these quirks and kinks will disappear!”

In the blink of an eye, the playwright’s mood had reversed course, and he was heartily laughing again. Not unlike an Ayckbourn play.

Until July 1 (59 E. 59th St., between Park and Madison avenues, 212-279-4200).