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Post by rueful on Feb 25, 2015 0:54:31 GMT
Times of London  Dominic Maxwell Sewell's on fire but lovers need more heat It's tempting, and it's perilous, to go back to an old love. When Patrick Marber's play Closer opened at the National Theatre in 1997, it felt like a modern classic in its playful but brutal dissection of sex and relationships. It was harsh, it was funny, it hurt.
It ran in the West End and on Broadway, and was turned into a film in 2004. Now, in its first major revival, Closer is creaking a bit.
There remains much to enjoy in the ruthless romantic to and fro between the cast of Rufus Sewell, Nancy Carroll, Oliver Chris and Rachel Redford. Yet in this production by David Leveaux these lovers need more heat. Without it, their perpetual readiness to seduce, dump, dissemble and open their hearts to one another feels as much a product of a playwright's desire to pack maximum heartache into two hours as a product of the selfishness of desire. It's never boring, but it's no longer entirely convincing either.
Individually, the cast impresses. Redford's tough yet tender Alice and Chris's smart-casual journalist Dan have an instant spark as they first flirt in A&E. The set piece, in which Dan poses as a woman as he arouses Sewell's Larry in an online chatroom, remains darkly, filthily funny. Carroll is composed and sensuous as Anna, the photographer who cheats on Larry with Dan.
Yet the longer the show goes on, the more Sewell takes over. He gives a busy but bewitching turn as an older lover, a successful doctor whose moods (amusement, trepidation, wolfishness, spitefulness, drunken determination, caveman fury) he lets gambol across his face.
Telling Dan that he's slept with Anna, his lips twitch in triumph. He's a lover and a fighter. Sewell's performance is a party we're all invited to attend.
Elsewhere, smart as the lines can be, sexy as this quartet are, their bad behaviour comes so thick and fast that it begins to look arbitrary; their sexual candour starts to sound written. I didn't believe that the composed Carroll would give in to Sewell's sexual blackmail, and I didn't feel the dramatic pay-off in Alice's secret -- despite a satisfying visual joke about it in Bunny Christie's design, which moves us at speed between bedrooms and bars as the years fly by.
This is no longer a devastating show, but it remains a thoroughly diverting evening. And when Sewell is centre stage it's a joy. |
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Post by kissmekate on Feb 25, 2015 7:45:39 GMT
Thanks for finding all those reviews, ladies! I love the conclusion of the last one.
And I've learned a new word: I had never heard "vomitorium" before!
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Post by midoro on Feb 25, 2015 8:51:02 GMT
Thanks Rueful for the further reviews!  |
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Post by walt on Feb 25, 2015 8:51:39 GMT
 a lot for finding and posting all these intriguing reviews! I'm afraid the wish that Adina mentioned at the end of Philip Fisher's review The Donmar is currently on a roll and there has to be every possibility that this wonderful production will follow My Night with Reg into a larger West End home in the very near future.may not come true due to the success of TMITHC... 
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Post by BuildersPassion on Feb 25, 2015 8:54:17 GMT
Thanks for sharing this reviews and articles! They are good read, especially the nice words about Rufus  . Me too, Kate ..   . |
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Post by kygal on Feb 25, 2015 11:32:09 GMT
Good one. Thanks Rueful. Thanks Adina. GE2 you have been published!
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Post by GreenEyesToo on Feb 25, 2015 14:54:40 GMT
LOL! How funny that my tweet was quoted!  Thank you for the additional reviews, Adina and Rueful  - not sure I agree with all of them, but I do where they praise Rufus, of course! SO glad you were able to get the Times one that was blocked the other night, Rueful - gosh, that was worth the wait, wasn't it? What a glowing tribute to our guy.  I'm glad Rachel Redford is getting due praise - for someone so comparatively inexperienced, she really holds her own with the other actors. She really is someone to watch in the future. I love the idea of a West end transfer, but as Walt points out, it won't be with Rufus  - unless filming on High Castle gets put back. Oh, and this pic that Adina posted has to be my favourite so far:   |
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Post by GreenEyesToo on Feb 25, 2015 18:53:15 GMT
Here's the full review by Mark Shenton (his was one of the tweets I posted the other night): Closer
Review by Mark Shenton
24 Feb 2015
Patrick Marber's play Closer originally premiered in 1997 at the National Theatre, before subsequently transferring to the West End and Broadway and being made into a 2004 film that starred Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen (swapping roles from the one he created in the original stage version).
It really caught the pulse of its times in its anguished portrait of young London professionals seeking to connect and breaking each other's vulnerable hearts. There was even one of the theatre's first onstage cybersex chats, so the play was definitely ahead of its time.
But 18 years later, how does it feel? David Leveaux's superbly nuanced and alert production makes it seem as blistering, contemporary and alive as it was then. One or two references are gone - like to the fashionability of New York's Paramount Hotel - and the characters also carry slimline laptops and mobiles.
Never mind the technology, though; the vagaries of these intersecting lives, flowing and floundering around each other, is constant, as two men - a surgeon and a journalist - are engaged in competitive battles with each other over two women, a photographer and a stripper.
This layered portrait of love, sex, deceit and desire plays with agonising, sometimes brutal feeling. And it is played to a bruising perfection by the stunning ensemble cast of Rufus Sewell, Nancy Carroll, Oliver Chris and relative newcomer Rachel Redford. Haunting and harrowing by turns, they make this one of the most chilling and churning plays in town.
www.londontheatre.co.uk/londontheatre/reviews/closer15.htm |
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Post by adina on Feb 25, 2015 23:45:37 GMT
"Sewell's performance is a party we're all invited to attend." I just love this line! Well, I love all his lines about Rufus. (See Adina, someone saw chemistry.)  ) "She makes the character that sails closest to groaning stereotype - Alice, the troubled, beautiful, quirky stripper - feel like a real woman rather than merely a sexy young “waif” (this is aided by Sewell playing the strip-club scene as a slurring, pitiable drunk - tilting an uneven power-balance back in Alice's favour)."Ha! And a new prespective: www.timeout.com/london/theatre/closer By Andrzej Lukowski A great revival of Patrick Marber's icy play about love in London.
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 S**t 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 S**t, 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.
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Post by kygal on Feb 26, 2015 11:43:09 GMT
Nice. Thanks Ladies.
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Post by rueful on Feb 26, 2015 12:39:07 GMT
And I've learned a new word: I had never heard "vomitorium" before! The Rooftop--always educational! We should offer graduate degrees. Thanks for adding Mark Shenton's review, GE2! Another great one! (I was so happy to find out I could get the Times through my library. Especially when I read it. ) "Sewell's performance is a party we're all invited to attend." I just love this line! Well, I love all his lines about Rufus. Me too! (See Adina, someone saw chemistry.)  But any opinion that favors Rufus is correct. Thanks for adding the new Timeout review! |
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Post by kissmekate on Feb 26, 2015 13:26:30 GMT
And I've learned a new word: I had never heard "vomitorium" before! The Rooftop--always educational! We should offer graduate degrees. Would that make me Bachelor of Rufus (B. Ruf.)? |
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Post by rueful on Feb 26, 2015 16:24:33 GMT
Would that make me Bachelor of Rufus (B. Ruf.)? I like it! I think we'd better limit ourselves to that one. I'd hate to think of the trouble that would erupt if we said we were offering Master of Rufus.  |
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Post by kissmekate on Feb 26, 2015 17:48:52 GMT
Guess why I refrained from saying that! |
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Post by rueful on Feb 26, 2015 19:10:01 GMT
You're more subtle than I am. |
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a lot for finding and posting all these intriguing reviews!
. 
. 
- not sure I agree with all of them, but I do where they praise Rufus, of course! SO glad you were able to get the Times one that was blocked the other night, Rueful - gosh, that was worth the wait, wasn't it? What a glowing tribute to our guy. 
- unless filming on High Castle gets put back.
) 
But any opinion that favors Rufus is correct.