Closer

by Patrick Marber

seen at the Donmar Warehouse 19 March 2015

This is the first London professional revival of Patrick Marber's 1997 play, sanctioned by the playwright. Directed by David Leveaux it features Rufus Sewell as Larry, Nancy Carroll as Anna, Olver Chris as Dan and Rachel Redford as Alice, with the set designed by Bunny Christie and the lighting by Hugh Vanstone.

The characters meet by chance or in the course of their working lives; at first Alice and Dan are together after an accidental meeting resulting from a traffic injury. Anna and Larry become interested in one another, having met as a consequence of an extraordinary (and theatrically famous) internet chat session in which Anna was impersonated by Dan. But Dan also falls for Anna; Larry eventually takes up with Alice; finally all have gone their separate ways and no-one is happy. The headlong sense of entitlement and an uneasy sense that one should be 'honest' no matter the cost means that most of the professions of love are basically self-centred and the idea of day-to-day commitment comes a sorry last in anyone's priorities. 

How do such blind ad hedonistic people deserve our attention and even gain our sympathy? The dialogue is acerbic but often funny, and even when people are saying the most horrible things out of the pain they are causing each other one sees the pain as well as the heartlessness. and if the pain seems to us an obvious consequence of an appalling selfishness, yet these are still wounded people for whom we can feel sympathy. A mere summary of what happens or what is said gives little insight into the warmth one feels from moment to moment for one character or another as they flail about.

The cast are excellent, and, given the intimate space of the Donmar, the slightest facial tics, startled looks of pain or the occasional rueful acknowledgement of a predicament can be powerfully affecting.  Rufus Sewell brings a ruthless charm to the aspiring dermatologist Larry while Oliver Chris invests Dan with a naivety which is superficially attractive but which in fact allows him as much self-regard as anyone. Nancy Carroll's Anna is warm, intriguing, apparently self-aware, wonderful to watch on stage, while Rachel Redford portrays the younger Alice as quirky and terribly needy. The confrontations arising from their interactions are at times explosive - the breakup scenes in particular - and at times cold and manipulative; the effect both bleak and moving.

The play demands lightning changes of scene, or shifts of time in the same place, that are not quite flashbacks or flashes forward, The stage and lighting designs facilitate these shifts remarkably well; it is always clear withing seconds where we are and why, even in an extraordinary scene in a cafe where Anna's meetings with the two men hours apart are intercut, snippets of each taking place while the other is at the bar getting drinks. At the other extreme clues are placed cunningly for later detonation to demonstrate how far from close everyone has been.