“Blisteringly well written…franker, more intelligent and fiercer than any new comedy of recent years” (The Daily Mail)

“Closer does not merely hold your attention, it burrows into you” (New York Magazine).

“Smart, sexy and sublimely funny” (The New York Post)
 

How do we get closer to people? How do they get closer to us? How close is too close? Set in London in the 1990s, Patrick Marber’s award-winning Closer explores these questions brilliantly. At times raw, shocking and funny, Closer gives an unflinching examination of the anatomy of modern relationships.

Through a savage quadrille of romance and betrayal, Closer zooms in on the couplings of its characters: four people in the “body business”. There’s Anna the photographer, Larry the dermatologist, Alice the stripper and Dan the obituary writer. They are successful external strategists, using sex and careers to bait their lovers. But once baited, the lovers don’t know what to do with their prey, emotionally. The closer one is reeled in, the more the other struggles to be released. Never do they truly learn to merge their physical acts of lovemaking with the emotional truths that beckon them to move closer. And so the couples break and regroup over and over through a vicious (and sometimes hilarious) cycle of love and lust on a seeming mission to find truth. But, as one character proclaims: “What’s so great about truth? The truth hurts people. Try lying for a change. It’s the currency of the world.”

Closer  was awarded such accolades as the Olivier Award for Best New Play, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy. It has placed Marber in the league with Noel Coward’s Private Lives, Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and David Hare’s Skylight. What sets Closer apart from the rest is that it plumbs the depths of the human personality with much more scrutiny than any other play on the subject of modern relationships. “This is a play by a man who has drunk desire down to the last bitter dregs, who knows that love can hurt and scar as much as it consoles and heals” (The Daily Telegraph). And yet Closer, like life, rarely remains sombre. Marber’s exquisite use of language will leave you thinking and laughing. Don’t miss it!

Closer runs January 11-February 3, 2002. Previews are January 9th and 10th.