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Is ‘Closer’ the best play about London ever written?
It’s not so much that Patrick Marber’s 1997 masterpiece has a fine eye for the nooks and crannies of the old City, though there is that – the play and 2004 film have pretty much made obscure Victorian memorial Postman’s Park famous. It’s more the psychology of London that Marber understands so well, the way in which its enormity and its transience allow you to reinvent yourself – whether you like it or not.
Dan, Alice, Anna and Larry are four perfect strangers who happen to come into each others’ orbits. Writer Dan ditches his girlfriend for brassy ingénue Alice, but charges into an affair with photographer Anna, who he jokingly sets up on a date with Larry, a stranger he finds online, only for Larry and Anna to marry, Anna to leave Larry for Dan, and Larry to take revenge by sleeping with Alice. Got that? Great!
The cold brilliance of ‘Closer’ lies in Marber’s understanding that it could never be set in a small town. The men in particular behave with a sexual selfishness that comes from knowing that in London, you can treat people like shit and then melt away; that you can never even begin to piss off the whole city. More than that, though: London is so huge and confusing that it lends itself to inconstancy. Dan is loving to Alice while she’s there and loving to Anna while she’s there – of course he’s a shit, but on some level it’s because within London’s yawning expanse, he’s incapable of viewing the two women as being part of the same world.
It’s a great if somewhat heartless play, and director David Leveaux has done a bang-up job with his revival. A tremendous cast helps: newcomer Rachel Redford clearly has a tremendous future ahead, giving the standout turn as ballsy, childlike, inscrutable Alice; Oliver Chris’s Dan is a deft mix of sad sack and arsehole; Rufus Sewell is pathetic, malign and a bit creepy as Larry; Nancy Carroll’s Anna throws some relatable decency into the blend.
Not only does Leveaux understand the play’s icy rhythms, its dance of flip humour, callous nastiness and post-modern showing off, but he’s also rather effortlessly pulled what’s often viewed as quintessentially ’90s play into 2015. Bunny Christie’s neon-streaked set is posher, plusher and more clinical than in the original play and film – you’d guess Anna and Larry’s pad is some expensively soulless new tower block that only sprang up in the last few years.
As London becomes more anonymous, ‘Closer’ becomes more truthful.