CLOSER. To 16 June
Northampton
CLOSER
by Patrick Marber
Royal Theatre To 16 June 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
BSL Signed 6 June
Post-show discussion 6 June
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 01604 624811
www.royalandderngate.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 June
Too close for comfort to some aspects of love.
Patrick Marber’s 1997 play recalls the time when emails and chatrooms (subject of an hilariously filthy exchange demonstrating the selfishness and exploitability of sex) were the newest word in urban sophistication, and a channel for loneliness amid crowds. The play still works because it uses surface modernity to express essential human experience.
For all the sex and desire among its dermatologist, newspaper obituarist and exhibition-standard photographer (jobs involving probing into others’ lives), Marber’s people never reach to the core of human relationships. As women and men oscillate between desire and disillusion, the play shows an affluent society built on shifting emotional sands.
It’s reflected in the large panels of Lucy Osborne’s set. Moving around between scenes they create solidity within a void. The space can be intimate; more usually it places characters in an uncomfortably incomplete location: hospital waiting-room, aquarium, gallery, museum.
Sculpted and tonally modulated by Emma Chapman’s lighting, this setting emphasises key moments; a blow-up photo imprisoned behind a grille, women arguing near to a demure Victorian-girl museum model in Tamara Harvey’s ever-alert production.
This is Marber’s second play, following the male gambling world of Dealer’s Choice, and while it criticises the impulses behind men’s behaviour, there are remains of the earlier play’s male focus in the deeper light it spreads on their actions. Yet Harvey ensures all four voices are clearly heard.
The female performances are strongest here. Abby Ford’s Alice, the wild-card contrasting the others’ professions with short-term sex-work, displays the unconscious arrogance of someone who gives and demands absolute love.
Susie Trayling’s contrasting Anna shows a cool surface covering the capacity to be hurt, switchbacking neatly between men in a restaurant scene suggesting the ingenuity of Ayckbourn or Frayn.
Jake Maskell’s would-be novelist has the feel of someone unable to sustain a relationship, glimpsed also in James Hillier’s extremes of anger and desire as Larry, though, limited by undifferentiated roaring when angry, this remains a series of responses to situations in search of a character.
Still, this Closer comes close enough to what’s needed, forming a strong end to the Royal’s ‘Love & Madness’ season.
Alice: Abby Ford
Larry: James Hillier
Dan: Jake Maskell
Anna: Susie Trayling
Director: Tamara Harvey
Designer: Lucy Osborne
Lighting: Emma Chapman
Sound: Colin Pink
2007-06-07 18:25:51