CLOSER: Marber: Bham Rep till 27 10 01

Birmingham

CLOSER: Patrick Marber
Birmingham Rep: Tkts 0121 236 4455
Runs: 2h 10m, in repertory till Sat 27 Oct 2001
Review: Rod Dungate, 2nd October 2001

A bit of a rottweiler – it grabs you by the throat, shakes you about and leaves you gasping for more.

Funny, cleverly plotted, stimulating, but so very bleak. Patrick Marber's CLOSER, in this production by Jonathan Church, is a bit of a rottweiler – it grabs you by the throat, shakes you about and leaves you gasping in your seats – extraordinarily for such an uncompromising play, gasping for more.

Church has paired CLOSER with Coward's PRIVATE LIVES (reviewed on this site). Both plays deal with two couples who swap partners (and swap back.) Both plays centre around love. But while in Coward's play the couples seem to be struggling towards an ideal of mutual love, Marber's couples strive towards a love for the satisfaction it could bring them – sexually, emotionally, selfishly.

Both Marber and Coward point towards the fact that love is impossible to find – but Marber's play does it more directly and more brutally. Sex is about as far as anyone gets, the satisfaction is transitory and messed up by relationships. In an age of global communications and easy international travel, the best sex is cyber sex, notoriously a cop-out from commitment of any kind. In the mouths of Marber's characters: 'The best sex is anonymous.'

Rosanna Lavelle, Harry Burton, Ian Shaw and Carolyn Backhouse (Alice, Dan, Larry, Anna) partner each other in this modern danse macabre, each playing with a highly charged neurotic energy that screams Me, me, me: while playing at full emotional pitch there is a disconnection between them that says it all. Lavelle (Alice) combines vulnerability with her neurosis making her an inevitable victim.

This dissection of 21st Century emotional relationships takes place in Ruari Murchison's modern, stark, white and perspex clinical settings.

Jonathan Church has created a terrific pairing that's more than worth making a great effort to see.

Cast:
Alice: Rasanna Lavelle
Dan: Harry Burton
Larry: Ian Shaw
Anna: Carolyn Backhouse

Director: Jonathan Church
Design: Ruari Murchison
Lighting: Nick Beadle
Sound: Ian Roberts

2001-10-03 09:50:21