#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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#9. Cloud Nine

Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill

Almeida Theatre production (2007)

Premiere: Dartington College of Arts (14 February 1979)

Published by Methuen in Plays: One

Caryl Churchill had been writing for over twenty years by the time Cloud Nine premiered, but it was this play that brought her international acclaim and indeed continues to be performed. It was most recently seen at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Thea Sharrock. 

The play is a study of sexual politics, beginning in the patriarchal, strictly repressive Victorian colonial Africa, and then wrenching the characters rapidly into post-sexual revolution London in 1979. The central characters are a family; husband and wife Clive and Betty, their two children Edward and Victoria, and grandmother Maud. 

Churchill's introduction to the script is illumating about the process used to create the piece. It was developed in collaboration with director Max Stafford-Clark and the Joint Stock Theatre Group in three weeks of exploratory workshops on sexual politics initially, before Churchill spent some time writing the script, and then a final rehearsal process leading to production. The production was also seen in London at the Royal Court following a tour. 

Cloud Nine's first act is dominated by the rules of colonial administrator and patriarch Clive, who forces any identities that would shame his beloved England into repression. The act is a wickedly funny satire of Victorian family values, with Clive insisting that women are "dark like this continent, mysterious" and affairs and indiscretion rife beneath the facade of a content nuclear family. 

Churchill plays with form joyously. She uses song and verse freely, creating a heightened theatrical world particularly in the first act. The scenes are episodic, with rapid successions of vignettes between different characters. She utilises extreme imagery and language to great effect. Some of the characters lapse into direct address, particularly in celebration of newly accessible sexual practises in the second act.

"I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life / Is to be what he looks for in a wife. / I am a man's creation as you see, / And what men want is what I want to be." Betty  

Churchill presents a web of gender subversion, with Betty played by a man and their son Edward played by a woman, while their daughter Victoria is not even autonomic but a manipulated dummy. This not only ensures hilarity, but also communicates a much deeper thread that is central to Churchill's play. Betty introduces herself; "I am a man's creation as you see, / And what men want is what I want to be." She does not value herself as a woman - she can only find value in achieving what Clive wants of her. She plays the role of the quiet domestic angel, but with the arrival of Clive's romantic explorer friend, Harry, her deep dissatisfaction is made clear. Edward in the first act shows how masculinity is a learned set of behaviours, rather than something innate. This is heightened by the cross-gender casting, with both Clive and Betty chastising Edward whenever he is found acting like a "sissy", epitomised by playing with his sister's doll. 

The family have a black servant, Joshua, played by a white actor. This cross-racial casting effectively makes the internal battle manifest - Joshua declares "My skin is black but oh my soul is white. / I hate my tribe. My master is my light."; he does not identify with his own race or people, dominated by colonial values. 

Unfortunately, though, the uncomfortable side effect of this is that while certain themes are nicely highlighted, others are compromised. Churchill plays it safe with some of the more difficult (at least for the time of writing) gender politics. Harry, the explorer, has a relationship with Edward. This is tempered by the fact that Edward is played by a woman, so this gay relationship becomes heteronormative and inoffensive. This waters down the effect of what is actually on the page, which could be a very challenging scenario for audiences. Clive's revulsion at Harry's homosexuality, and Betty's blindness to the governess' sexuality, are gratifyingly laughable, though.

Almeida Theatre production (2007)

Act two is set in a London park in 1979, but for the characters only 25 years have passed. Betty leaves Clive, Edward has taken a lover who enjoys cruising, Victoria has a daughter of her own and falls in love with Lin, a mother herself, as her traditional marriage collapses. The act is lead by women and gays, as the sexual revolution has released them from some of the old repressions. 

This cleverly illustrates having to reconcile one's liberated present with one's past. This is surely true for all those who lived through the sexual liberation of the 1960s and '70s, and indeed still true for all those who must fight to escape the repression of traditional or conservative homes. Churchill briefly brings characters back from act one which otherwise do not appear, like lingering ghosts reminding the characters of how they were brought up, of what their old values were which they have now reviled against. Clive appears, for instance, not long after Betty (now played by a woman) has paid tribute to masturbation, reminding her "You are not that sort of woman, Betty. I can't believe you are." He has said these words before to her, in response to her confession of dissatisfaction in act one. Churchill may be asking 'this sexual revolution is all well and good, but can we ever be free of our past?' This is a crucial question for the generations living through these changes. Self-hatred and repression is, ultimately, the most powerful of all forms. How do those people find happiness, or is happiness only to truly be found in following generations?

There is something inconclusive about this play. While Churchill observes the changes that have happened, she doesn't encourage any sort of commentary on it. She avoids what are the really tough questions. Is the apparent death of the nuclear family, with traditional marriages falling apart everywhere you look, really for the best? Is hedonistic sex as satisfying as relationships, and are polygamous relationships as stable as monogamous relationships? What are the implications of same-sex parenting? Although I would of course argue that gay couples can be just as effective parents, it is certainly different - and in the culture of 1979 that sort of discussion is surely even more important. There is a risk that these changes are taken so lightly that they seem not seismic and fought for but part of a natural progression. This may inadvertently belittle the changes that Churchill might indeed be attempting to celebrate. 

The overriding message from Churchill's play, underlined by mentions of the British post-colonial oppression of Northern Ireland in act two, is that there is indeed an overpowering link between political oppression and sexual oppression. This illuminates the inextricable link between the political with the personal in a sophisticated manner, as Sarah Kane would later do in Blasted. 

Churchill's play is undoubtedly problematic and doesn't present any final resolution for the characters. This is perhaps what has made the play endure for over thirty years; it is still just as relatable for audiences across the world. And Churchill's wit and dialogue, as ever, are second-to-none. Cloud Nine is a fascinating experiment even if some of Churchill's more recent works are a little more refined.

Thea Sharrock's production at the Almeida Theatre (2007)

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