Official/press reviews and articles

[adina]

The tide is arriving after the opening night, but some journalists couldn't wait. www.culturewhisper.com/whisper/view/id/3751



FIRST LOOK: Donmar Warehouse, Closer - play review

In internet-saturated 2015, where expletives and obscenities have lost the power to shock, Patrick Marber's script is inevitably less fresh than when it premiered in 1999. But Closer is in no way stale. The distinctive brand of out-to-shock, in-yer-face theatre packs a different punch sixteen years after it first sent shockwaves on stage; a faux pornographic chatroom dialogue, or sleazy strip club scene won't elicit a gasp anymore. But the humour and crushing honesty haven't dulled with time.
The sometimes violent, sometimes casual use of the C word, may have a stronger stage precedent now, but the way in which Marber creates moments of arresting poetry from such ugly language is still unparalleled in theatre. It reminds instead of the poet Philip Larkin in its devastating dysphemism. Instead of dated, the shows feels nostalgic. After a real meeting is prompted, albeit vicariously, through a virtual encounter, Anna (Nancy Caroll) refers to the vast connections offered by the world wide web. To us now this is facile, but it works to show how quickly interactions have been changed by the internet.
Aside from the specifics of time and place, the humanity and emotion of the plot is just as resonant. This tale of the most tangled and torrid love affairs imaginable cuts deeper than the standard love triangle -- or in this case, square -- and the situations still spark with humour and stab with sadness. We follow two couples from the first encounter, full of fizz and promise, through to the fraught final meetings. While the vividness of these relationships comes from the base, brutal focus on sex, an over-arching exposure of love and loss and futility is subtly handled. The Donmar Warehouse production is pacy and slickly staged, with abrupt shifts between each couple often leaving the parallel partners on stage, reminding exactly how intwined these four people are.
Closer is always going to make for gripping viewing, and the kind of drama that the theatre is made for. The film adaptation haunts the stage show -- there's an obvious resemblance between this revival cast and their Hollywood predecessors -- but there's also an intensity and blackness that's borne of the immediacy of live performance, and the quality of the performers.
Rufus Sewell deftly maintains a well-deserved heartthrob status. But with within the charm he also exposed Larry the Dermotolagist as a brute, negotiating the line between machismo and vulnerability seamlessly. Wry and softly-spoken, Sewell had the audience hanging off every word. So, when he lets rip, whether it was bitter insults or heart-wrenching sobs, the effect of is spine-tingling. Oliver Chris as intense writer Daniel delivered quips with sarcasm and warmth and struck a sizzling chemistry with Nancy Carroll as an elegant Anna. They made the instant and obsessive romance not just convincing, but also compelling. For a fresh drama school graduate, starring alongside such experienced and accomplished stage actors is daunting, plus the role of Alice was so exquisitely immortalised on film by Natalie Portman. The nerves did show in Rachel Redford's performance. While her fresh-faced youth was spot on, it took her a while to warm up to the charisma that defines the character. We saw Closer on its opening night, so we look forward to seeing how this promising young actress thaws and relaxes into the role.



I think this is a rather good start for the Thread of Praising.

[rueful]

Feb 13, 2015 15:49:09 GMT adina said:

I think this is a rather good start for the Thread of Praising.

An excellent start! What a lovely review for Rufus! Thanks for finding this, Adina!

[midoro]

Thanks Adina! Lovely review!

[adina]

The Independent decided to post a non-Rufus Marber-Leveaux article. Hah! Have the journalists forgotten what a good interviewee Rufus is?? Hey, wake up!

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/come-closer-playwright-patrick-marber-on-the-revival-of-his-shock-nineties-play-10044457.html

In reviving his seminal 1997 play Closer, playwright Patrick Marber is having an odd encounter: “It’s like your past coming to meet you. Very strange feeling ... quite nice; bit disturbing.” He’s not the only one who’ll be brought up sharp by the return of Closer at the Donmar this month, in its first major revival since the original, late-Nineties run that saw it travel from the National to the West End and on to Broadway.
The play – a witty but often cruel four-hander about the romantic turmoil of four Londoners, involving overlapping relationships and betrayals – tends to elicit strong responses. An audience may feel flayed by the brutalities that unfold, as we see the first and last meetings of each swapping couple. People who witnessed it in one of its original incarnations tend to remember the experience.
Director David Leveaux certainly does. “It’s one of those plays that marks – not just for me, but for a lot of us – a hinge moment in the narrative of British writing. I was just startled by it; I thought it was the most brutally beautiful diamond of a play, and in its treatment of intimacy, so radical.”
Back in the Nineties, its most obviously radical element was its explicitness, with frank discussion of shagging, lashings of bad language and the first example of online sex in theatre (“Wait, have to type with 1 hand … I’m cumming right now … ohohoh.”). “Some people seemed to like it and some people seemed to be very upset by it, and some people were angered by it,” remembers Marber. But that was 17 years ago; does it still have the capacity to startle?
For Leveaux, it certainly does – but not because people call each other slags or compare the taste of semen. Indeed, for him, sexual explicitness was never what was shocking about it in the first place. After many millions of years of evolution, does not intimacy still have the power to startle? Yes it does,” says Leveaux. “The play reminds me that we are stranger than we imagine and less knowing of ourselves.”
Marber agrees. “It isn’t the frankness of the language – it’s the frankness of the feelings of the play that are genuinely shocking. It’s the rawness of how it feels to be hurt, to be jealous, to be in love. Hopefully one only experiences that pain three or four times in a life, but this play is a compression of all that. It’s the shock of the passion more than the language.”
Which is why they both resist the notion – and Closer has had its critics – that the play is an exercise in cynicism: nasty people being nasty to each other to provoke. “There’s not a cynical corpuscle in the play,” insists Leveaux. “Actually, there’s a huge amount of love in the play.” There wouldn’t, I suggest, be any real sense of pain if there wasn’t? “Exactly – it’s not sceptical about the possibility of love; [it’s about] people trying to get that right.”
Having seen it performed all over the world, however, Marber does acknowledge that Closer can be played in different ways, from brutally austere to sexily passionate. “The play is neither hot nor cold; the play is what the actors and the directors do with it. We very consciously cast warm actors,” he explains, his preference being for a not-too-spicy, not-too-icy interpretation where you are, at least, “pleased to see these people”. These people being Nancy Carroll as photographer Anna; Rufus Sewell as doctor Larry; Oliver Chris as writer Dan, and Rachel Redford as stripper Alice. “Let’s be upfront,” says Leveaux, “it’s a sensual experience. We’re lucky to have four naturally, very differently, very sensual actors.”
More than most, Closer is a play that will live or die on that chemistry. And, as Marber points out, it’s a tricky one because it involves a number of configurations, passed through rapidly. “I want you to be attached to all the couples, and think ‘yeah they could make a go of it’. The play wants to be – the playwright wants it to be – a romantic comedy. It begins as a romcom and then takes a darker turn....”
Trying to love and getting burned is something most of us have experienced, so Closer should still bring a punch in the guts to a whole new generation – or one perhaps whose knowledge of it extends only to the slightly strained 2004 Hollywood film adaptation, which Marber scripted, starring Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman.
Given it’s a play so associated with the Nineties, it’s interesting to discover they’re not presenting it as a period piece. “The play was never originally ‘about’ the Nineties,” says Leveaux, “So, no – it’s in the here and now.” But what about the technology – chiefly the famous scene in which the two men, one pretending to be a woman, have badly-spelled sex in an internet chatroom?
It survives intact, apparently. “All great plays are forms of prophecies,” suggests Leveaux. “That’s a scene which wholly stands up. [Although] in those dial-up days, you had to be committed!” Marber acknowledges that, even if he was prophetic in having a character state that the internet was “the future” – the one line that has had to be cut, given that future is now the present – he still underestimated the internet’s impact. “In my naiveté, I thought it might be like the fax machine ....”
(...)


I didn't copy the last part of the article because it is about Marber's other play.


P.S.

Josie Rourke: "That moment in an Artistic Director's life when she concedes she may not have been concentrating when programming Closer on Valentine's Day."

Come on, Patrick Marber says that the play is a romantic comedy! I just read this! 
Think of the stage direction in the Aquarium scene! "Larry produces a crumpled rose from his coat pocket. He hands it to Anna."



Marber: This is a romantic comedy! Really!!!!

[walt]

a lot, Adina!

[GreenEyesToo]

Oooh, for the articles, Adina - especially the first one. Spine-tingling indeed! Can't wait to see what changes they'll have made by the next time I see it - but I think his performance will still be spine-tingling!

Oh, and thanks for starting the new thread - we'll keep this one for official/press reviews and articles (I've opened another for Rooftopper reviews and pics) so I hope you won't mind if I amend the thread title slightly, Adina.

Edited to add that some people didn't think this production is very good, but even she praised Rufus:

(I have to say, she's wrong about the chemistry)

[nell]

Thanks for posting these Adina. They made interesting reading. I liked the reviewers comments about Rufus and I have to agree. Even Mr Nell commented on how good Rufus was. I'd have to categorically disagree regarding Rachel Redford's nerves showing though. Doubtless they were all nervous but there was no sign of that from where I was sitting. She played the naive youngster with the ballsiness of a stripper very well.

The Donmar Warehouse production is pacy and slickly staged, with abrupt shifts between each couple often leaving the parallel partners on stage, reminding exactly how intwined these four people are.

I liked this aspect too. It made me think of the scene in Tristan and Isolde when they were together and Tristan morphed into Lord Marke. Off course the situation was different but the effect was the same.

They made the instant and obsessive romance not just convincing, but also compelling

I'd also agree on this point. Something the film version failed to do for me. As for the film version haunting this - the only way I can see how is if viewers are put off going to see the play because they didn't like the film. If this happens they are sorely missing out.

P.S. twitter.com/josierourke/status/566577520573964288
Josie Rourke: "That moment in an Artistic Director's life when she concedes she may not have been concentrating when programming Closer on Valentine's Day."

Haha! Yes I had wondered if it's start on Monday, skipping Friday 13th too. I deliberately avoided the 14th Feb thinking it might not seem the done thing. However, I really don't see why we should be dictated to by the world of advertising.........

[GreenEyesToo]

So here's the Michael Billington review (he was at the theatre on Saturday), but a niiiiice pic first:



***SPOILERS***


Closer review – Patrick Marber's play is as powerful and pertinent as ever
4 / 5 stars

Donmar Warehouse, London
David Leveaux’s fine revival featuring an expertly balanced cast shows this 1997 play is much more than the product of its time

Michael Billington

@billicritic

Monday 23 February 2015 22.00 GMT

Does it still resonate? That is the obvious question to ask about Patrick Marber’s play, which in 1997 seemed to reflect the sexual mores of the moment and which was visibly influenced by Steven Soderbergh’s lower-case movie, sex, lies and videotape. The good news – or bad news, depending on your point of view – is that Marber’s portrait of the failure of men and women to achieve spiritual as well as sexual intimacy seems as powerful and pertinent as ever.

For all its debt to Soderbergh, the play reminds me of the great Viennese dramatist Arthur Schnitzler in its portrayal of the daisy-chain of love and lust. It starts with a meeting in a hospital between the waif-like Alice, nursing a minor injury, and Dan, a newspaper obituarist and would-be novelist. But, although they start an affair, Dan is simultaneously attracted to a photographer, Anna, who specialises in wistful portraits of sad strangers. While Anna is equally drawn to Dan, she marries a dermatalogist, Larry, whom she guiltily betrays and who sporadically deceives her.

“O tell me the truth about love,” cried Auden; and, even if Marber’s play is not the whole truth, it pins down with merciless flair the gulf between the sexes. Marber is especially, even excessively, hard on men who are seen as barely capable of making a total emotional commitment: in the play’s most piercing line, Anna complains to Alice of men that “they love the way we make them feel but not us.”

Debatable as that may be, Marber shows that all four characters still have a bottomless capacity for suffering and that the new freedoms – and the play embraces laptop sex and lapdance clubs – have done nothing to resolve the pain and anxiety of intimate relationships.

It is that element of suffering that animates David Leveaux’s fine production in which surface chic is offset by emotional intensity. Marber’s Larry may be an upwardly mobile medical professional but, in the scene where he discovers Anna’s infidelity, Rufus Sewell reveals a self-abasing rage and torment that is truly shocking to behold. Equally, Anna may be a highly successful snapper whose portraits adorn gallery walls and museum shops, but Nancy Carroll’s vividly expressive eyes convey the same vulnerability and solitude she finds in her subjects.

A comparable angst is visible in the other two actors in an expertly balanced quartet. Oliver Chris as Dan suggests a man conscious of his own inadequacies as a writer and of his capacity to destroy any potentially happy relationship. Rachel Redford, a relative newcomer, is also magnetic as the mysterious Alice: she conveys all the character’s sexual awareness,while also hinting at an inner secret behind the youthful assurance.

Elegantly designed by Bunny Christie to evoke a world of minimalist modishness, this is a production that convinces one that Marber’s play is much more than the product of its time. It is an alarmingly durable, well-structured play about the distance between men and women and the restless neediness of love.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/23/closer-review-donmar-warehouse-london

[GreenEyesToo]

From The Times:



I can't get the review (yet) as it's subscription only, but the blurb on Google says "Sewell's on fire" - yay!

Three stars out of 5

www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/stage/theatre/article4363285.ece


From the Arts Desk:

***MORE SPOILERS***

Closer, Donmar Warehouse

Rufus Sewell in a revival of the 1997 classic that begins uncertainly before romping home


Political sleaze, arguments over Europe and fears for the NHS — sometimes it feels as if it’s the 1990s all over again. And, right on cue, theatre has been staging a whole shelfload of revivals of work from that decade: Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg, Conor McPherson’s The Weir and Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing. The Donmar Warehouse, under the spirited leadership of Josie Rourke, has led this trend, and its latest offering is Closer, Patrick Marber’s brilliant 1997 play, revived now with Rufus Sewell in the cast.

Set in London, and partly a Valentine to the hidden nooks and crannies of the metropolis, the play tells the story of two couples – Dan and Alice, and Larry and Anna – who meet, fall in love, cheat, split up and then fall in love all over again with each other’s partners. The story starts in a hospital, where obituaries journalist Dan has brought Alice, a streetwise waif and sometime stripper, after she’s been knocked down by a cab. They fall for each other. Eighteen months later, Dan has written a novel based on Alice’s life and is having his photograph taken by Anna. He falls for her. But then so does Larry, a doctor from the first scene of the play. The permutations then play out over the course of the evening.

At first, I thought that David Leveaux’s revival was miscast. Compared to the first production, Rufus Sewell’s Larry is too subtle to be convincing as the caveman that the role demands; Rachel Redford’s Alice is more comfortable being vulnerable than being enraged; while Nancy Carroll’s Anna lacks sensuality and Oliver Chris’s Dan is not reserved enough. Somehow the chemistry felt all wrong. But, than goodness, things warm up in the second half and the set pieces — in the strip club (pictured below), in Larry’s office and the “mercy f***” scene — do catch fire.

Closer is elegantly structured, with its four characters never appearing together on stage, and most scenes being two-way dialogues — one a hilarious sex chat on the internet — and the play has a formal balance which encourages comparisons with Noël Coward’s Private Lives. Marber’s writing retains its freshness and there are many memorable lines: Alice’s “Everyone loves a big fat lie” or Larry’s “I love your scar, I love everything about you that hurts” or Anna’s “You’re a man, you’d come if the tooth fairy winked at you”. (This last one always gets more laughs from women than from men — I wonder why?)

This is punchy writing which, given its author’s experience in penning scripts for television comedies such as Alan Partridge, is always in a hurry to get to the punchline. Every emotional exchange ends with a verbal bang. Very seductive, but also rather irritating. So although the dialogue is snappy, funny and occasionally moving, what you miss is a sense of compassion, the quality of pity. Yes, this is a young man’s play, with both the faults as well as the qualities that that implies.

Still, Marber’s account of the tensions of love is compelling and asks the right questions: why do men carry more emotional baggage than women? And why are women always ready — at any cost — to rescue them? And why do they all lie to each other, only to confess afterwards? At the same time, Marber shows how telling the truth can sometimes can be just as hurtful as telling a lie. Other issues, such as personal and sexual identity, come at you with their shirts undone. There is enough guilt, hurt and self-loathing here to last you a lifetime.

With its title borrowed from Joy Division’s second album, Closer is a hip event, and Leveaux’s production can boast a neon-soaked design by Bunny Christie and good music from Fergus O’Hare. Although the acting is uneven, Sewell is most convincing when he is most raffish and Carroll lights up in her exchanges with him. At their best, Chris is a boyish Dan and Redford a fragile, needy Alice. If the play no longer carries the crackling electric charge of the new, it still remains a powerful anatomy of the sex war.


www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/closer-donmar-warehouse

(Um.......".....with its four characters never appearing together on stage" - did he watch the right play??? )

[nell]

Thanks for posting GE2. Wait was there a review

The Times review is up now too but you need to be subscribed to read it.

[GreenEyesToo]

The Times review is up now too but you need to be subscribed to read it.

I know - that's what I've said!! (You're soooo easily dazzled by a pic of Rufus! )

Arts Desk review now added above.

And there's some great tweets:

Aaaaaaand....

We now have after party pics in THIS new thread .

[rueful]

Thanks for those reviews, GE2!     And those photos!

I'm glad Rufus is getting great reviews! Well deserved, I'm sure!

I can't see any tweets in your last post, though.

[GreenEyesToo]

Have you got BBCode enabled, Rueful? I'm using the embedding thingy next to the smiley icon. Are you getting pizza boxes or a huge blank space?

[rueful]

Huge blank space. Using Google Chrome. I'm not sure if BBCode is enabled, but I usually see smileys, etc. Where do I check?

[GreenEyesToo]

If you go to Profile > edit profile> settings, then look for Posting Default - the choice is Preview or BBCode, and I have the latter checked. See if that helps. If not, I'll put up the links as well.

ADDED to say that I just changed the code in the embedded tweets from https to http - so can you see them now, Rueful?