#11. Closer

Liza Walker (Alice) and Clive Owen (Dan) in
the original production (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

Closer by Patrick Marber
Premiere: Cottesloe, National Theatre, London 
(22 May 1997)

Published by Methuen Drama Modern Classics

Patrick Marber's second play, Closer, was impressively successful following its original run at the Cottesloe (recently renamed the Dorfman). It transferred first to the Lyttleton, then the West End and finally on to Broadway. A film adaptation also penned by Marber and several revivals internationally have followed. It has become renowned and respected as a modern classic. 

Marber's writting does indeed bear the hallmarks of genius. In a tight, brisk play he manages to articulately discuss a wide-reaching debate on the politics of sex and love. It is unsentimental and uncompromising, and I would suggest unparalleled in its enduring poignancy, power and relevance. 

There are only four characters in Marber's slick play, who perform what he calls a 'sexual square dance' caught between desire and betrayal. It is reminiscent of Pinter's Betrayal in its economy and scope, though differs in the sense that Pinter explicitly tool betrayal as his topic, while Marber explores all the sides of the war of attrition that these characters present as relationships. 

"Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words." Alice

His characters are observers, personified in their professions - Dan a writer, Anna a photographer and Larry a doctor - but also inherent in their nature. That is true except for the exception to all rules, Alice, a young stripper. It is perhaps truer to say that she is observed; the subject of the writer's book, the photographer's art and the doctor's diagnosis. But that, as a description, seems inadequate, as it somehow downgrades her to a position of inert powerlessness, which certainly isn't accurate. Alice knows she is observed and takes hold of it as her own, and finds an ability to stare her observers right back, square in the face. Perhaps, then, she is the one with the true power. But does anyone really win in this bloodbath? Ultimately, probably not.

Sally Dexter as Anna and Ciaran Hinds as Larry
(Photo: Tristram Kenton)

The characters in the play, like the Newton's Cradles often mentioned, constantly collide and swap partners. Through this cross-matching of couples, we see an incredibly diverse difference in the politics of relationships between different people. In the case of Alice, for instance, sex has become a monetary transaction. She is young, and perhaps most desperately in love with the idea of love. Alice becomes the magnetic force that seems to pull all the characters together in one way or another. Some of her one-liners, as if regurgitating learnt soulless epithets, are like those of a further disenchanted, disenfranchised Marilyn Monroe; "Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do." A wry humour rings out in her buried desire to self-destruct, underscored by a deep longing, a resoundingly painful wisdom. 

Marber's play is stylish and slick in its minimalism, and eminently quotable in its wit, but this belies a deeply felt and shrewdly observed piece that does not shy away from the grit and dirt of intensely passionate relationships. His characters are beautifully rounded, with no one coming out unscathed. Rhythmically, the piece storms on like a galloping horse. It is consistent in its power and brutal in its deftness and economy. 

Through the character of Dan, a failed novelist resigned to the Siberia of writing, the obituaries department of a newspaper, Marver communicated a sense of doubt. There is repeated questioning throughout the play of the ethical validity of Dan 'stealing' Alice's life for the subject of his novel - mirrored in Anna's work as a photographer. There are also some witty remarks about a writer's need for praise, and whether the mark of a good writer is that he isn't phased by it. Alice's appraisal of Dan's book is that he used bits of her; the only thing he left out was the truth. He even questions the importance or words themself when Alice confronts Dan with finality: "Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words." Marber could be questioning his own work, using his own experiences as the basis for much of his writing (not, of course, that Marber is short on praise today). There is something fascinating in this self-deprecating, self-referencing irony; it seems to leave it to the audience to decide what to take from the truth Marber presents onstage. 

Closer, appropriately canonised today, is without a doubt one of the best plays on the politics of sex and relationships written in recent decades. It is interesting when compared to Caryl Churchill's rather different Cloud Nine (recently covered on the blog), also a powerful consideration of sexual politics. Churchill's approach is satirical and overtly political in terms of the more generalised struggles between the sexes. Marber's play is more concerned with the internal politics of relationships, which echo loudly out from the pages of his succinct play to encompass many personal struggles in the modern age. In some ways, Marber's play is more haunting than Churchill's powerfully political play from the previous decade. 

Liza Walker (Alice) and Neil Pearson (Larry) in the 1998 West End transfer
(Photo: Tristram Kenton) 

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