Official/press reviews and articles

[midoro]

Mar 9, 2015 7:49:28 GMT walt said:

for finding and posting, GE2!

I wonder what the reviewer meant by saying that a larger venue beckons....

I wonder too! Thanks GE2!

[lovethemanrs]

I also had the pleasure of meeting BP on Saturday at the Donmar.

A very excited 'first-timer'. First for the play, first time meeting Rufus and.....
....first time trip to London. I feel sure she will report back about her experiences before long and hopefully there will be a photo.

'Rufus Sewell, looking like a Botticelli angel on crack, is brilliant as Larry, the low, jealous sexual predator'

LOL, saw this quote in the original article and thought, how apt. Aided and abetted beautifully by the stage lighting. Funny as I was discussing the drug 'aspect' with a friend on Saturday.

Closer is such an intricate, intelligent play riddled with irony. As for 'Closer', the characters are left anything but! Thoroughly enjoying the play every time I see it.

Midoro and Walt - I believe that there are plans to extend the run of Closer after April 4th, taking it to a larger London venue. Don't get over excited ladies. Sadly Rufus wouldn't be in the cast as he's off to film for his role in The Man in the High Castle.

Perhaps all those votes I cast were not such a good idea!!!  Sorry!!!  

Oh and YES, GE2 was definitely in the 'tripping zone'. Amazing restraint there!!!

Sorry most of this is on the wrong thread, but just wanted to refer back to the conversation re the 'Botticelli angel on crack', got carried away in the process!!!

Have a great week everyone.

[kissmekate]

, that's a great description!

[kygal]

Nice article. Thanks!

[GreenEyesToo]

Mar 9, 2015 9:01:19 GMT lovethemanrs said:

Oh and YES, GE2 was definitely in the 'tripping zone'. Amazing restraint there!!!

As if I would!!!


Just seen yet another lovely review :

They say that Park Theatre was deliberately constructed to resemble the Donmar. This month the programming oddly converges, with two savage relationship plays. The first is the revival of Patrick Marber’s 90s classic Closer at the Donmar, a tightly-constructed four-hander whose plot plays with a series of sexual permutations. Dan (Oliver Chris) and Alice (Rachel Redford) get together; Dan meets Anna (Nancy Carroll) and falls in love with her but stays with Alice; Larry (Rufus Sewell) and Anna meet and marry; Dan and Anna have an affair; Anna leaves Larry for Dan; Larry and Alice have a relationship; Anna goes back to Larry; Dan and Alice reunite; Larry and Anna split; Dan and Alice split. Put like that, it sounds like Midsummer Night’s Dream rewritten by David Mamet.

When I saw it back in the 1990s I don’t think I properly appreciated the quicksilver shifts of fury, desire and neediness that Marber creates between the characters; each new relationship builds on the emotional residue of the previous one, so that every scene is layered with history of previous exchanges.

All the characters keep insisting on knowing the truth, but the truth always brings pain. Rufus Sewell’s deceptively mild delivery never obscures the rage and manipulation beneath. He absolutely dominates the second act, as Larry moves from bafflement at Anna’s desertion to a calculated relish of maximum revenge. I wasn’t entirely convinced by Redford as Alice, though I thought her reading of the character was right. Alice could so easily be played as your standard damaged child-woman, but she brought a welcome sincerity to the role. I quite liked the idea expressed in the Donmar programme notes that the fifth character of the play is Postman’s Park in Clerkenwell, to which the four protagonists variously return. Bunny Christie’s spare production design highlights the gravestones of the ordinary people buried there, their heroism a mute counterpoint to the self-indulgence of the main characters.

parthenissa.wordpress.com/

[rueful]

Thanks for that review, GE2!  So many people seem to be swept away by Rufus's powerful acting!

Here's another nice one. We're getting so many quotable descriptions this time around, aren't we?  You'll see my favorite in blue.

britishtheatre.com/review-closer-donmar-warehouse-4stars/

REVIEW: Closer, Donmar Warehouse ✭✭✭✭

Stephen Collins

Closer
Donmar Warehouse
13 March 2015
4 Stars

In the programme for the first professional revival in London of Patrick Marber’s prizewinning 1987 play, Closer, the author discusses the genesis of the play. He says:

“I’ve said before that it was influenced in some respects by Steven Soderberg’s incredible Sex, Lies and Videotape. But really I wanted to do something that expressed something of the conversation that I and my friends had been having in our twenties and early thirties about life and love, and London and romance and sex and death, and all the things that were concerning and troubling us. In that period of your life before you settle down, find a partner, don’t find a partner, whatever. Betrayal and also The Real Thing were huge influences on Closer too, but they seemed to me to be plays about grown up people who have children, and the condition of Closer is that it’s about people who don’t have children yet.

Watching David Leveaux’ stylish revival at the Donmar Warehouse, where it is now playing, Closer seems not so much a play about people who don’t have children yet as a play about grown up children. Games, set-ups, lies, betrayals, revenge, secrets – the machinations of the four characters (who are the strangers who become lovers/lovers who become strangers) resemble schoolyard activities. Well, perhaps a schoolyard set amongst the fleshpots of Soho.

Marber’s dialogue is sharp, ugly and vicious; it is often very funny too. He cleverly manipulates the audience into believing that the urbane, enlightened discussions between the central foursome are adult when, in truth, they are more childish than adult. And, really, this is the strength of Closer and the key to its enduring appeal. It unsparingly examines Generation Disposable, the modern London crowd that seeks its pleasures wherever it chooses, without compromise or care for consequence.

The sense of inner London is profound in the play and not just because of the emphasis placed on Blackfriars Bridge, Postman’s Park and other specific locations, but also because of the archetypes Marber uses in the play: the spunky, rebellious lost girl; the rapacious business dude; the shambolic, likeable writer; and the sophisticated artist. These four, Alice, Larry, Dan and Anna, have interconnected and unlikely lives in London and Closer unsparingly dissects them, exposing mysteries along the way, the jigsaw-like clues to which, by play’s end, are all disclosed.

Leveaux directs with precision and clarity, building suspense while keeping the unlikeable characters interesting. Bunny Christie’s design is sleek and modern, with lots of flat, clean surfaces, a huge screen on which images and computer messages can be projected and contemporary modular furniture; the look and feel of the set reflects the inter-personal relationships of the central characters – a palette of colours revolving around black, white and grey.

Closer does feel like the shadow of Pinter is hovering close, but not in a bad way. There is also a sense of Stoppard, Hare and Rattigan about the truthful relationships laid bare. Marber is the true descendent of modern British writing. Leveaux breathes life into the cold, treacherous and ambivalent characters so that, while you may never feel you know them well, you come to understand what drives them. You feel a little closer to them.

The play examines the correct role, if there is one, for truth in relationships. If there is a need, is it a need for the whole truth or just that part of the truth that lets life flow forward? Rather cleverly, Marber’s play involves four people and a series of scenes which include all of the first and final meetings of the characters. Lust is examined alongside love, truth against deception. It’s a smorgasbord of human intimacy, the masks and motivations of modern life.

From an acting point of view, the four characters here provide both significant opportunity and the prospect of indelicate failure. It is difficult to play cold, hard people who are single-minded about the sating of their desires without alienating audiences or suggesting an inner warmth desperate to break out. Happily and impressively, Leveaux ensures his cast keeps in ice/vice mode throughout.

Nancy Carroll, one of the warmest, cleverest actresses walking the boards of London, is very impressive as the photographic artist, Anna. Poised and professional, Carroll’s Anna is the character who most actively explores the proposition that the Truth will set you free. Her astonishingly raw confrontation with Larry, where she provides the graphic detail of her infidelity with Dan, is the dramatic and emotional highpoint of the play. Every look, every pause, every phrase, is carefully considered by Carroll; her Anna is a complex construct, a fascinating portrait of a woman who does as she pleases until it no longer pleases her.

As Dan, the hopeless bloke who wants what he can see but doesn’t see what he wants (at least until it is too late), Oliver Chris is in splendid form. He has a natural flair for comedy and uses that to good advantage here, accentuating the goofier aspects of the writer on the make. The scene where Chris is online, pretending to be Anna, and attempting to seduce Larry on her behalf is both funny and skin-crawling. The dramatic high for Chris’ performance comes in the marvellous scene where, in the same instant, his character realises the fact of his love for Alice and she realises she does not love him. Splendidly judged.

As the sleek, predatory and anti-avuncular Larry, Rufus Sewell channels his inner panther to great success. It’s a brooding, calculating performance, bursting with intensity and icy charm. He is mesmerising in the opening scene of Act Two, when Larry takes refuge in a lap-dancing club and the sense of brutal indifference which Sewell brings to the character throughout the play is finely judged. He has a haunted, hollow centre which is almost tangible, and keeps the character from being entirely loathsome. Measured and menacing, Sewell’s Larry is very memorable.

Rachel Redford completes the quartet as Alice but is not in the league of the other performers. She has good focus, and presents a spiky and pouty version of Alice which is quite engaging; but too uneasy in the confrontational lap-dancing scene and unrelaxed throughout the performance, Redford does not get sufficiently under the skin and into the blood of the character.

So integral to the sense of the production are they that each of the lighting (Hugh Vanstone), sound design (Fergus O’Hare) and original music (Corin Buckeridge) could be actual characters in the piece; each contributes to both the sense of London and the detached, ambivalent sensibility.

This is a fine revival of an excellent and confronting play. In some ways, Marber’s writing is more relevant now than it was when it was first written and produced. Leveaux’ careful work ensures that new resonances breathe fresh interest in what is a masterpiece of complex, sexually charged behaviour.

[kissmekate]

Awwww, I also love the panther (=dark-furred, green-eyed, sleek lovely big cat) bit!

[lovethemanrs]

Yep, 'inner panther' does it for me!

[walt]

a lot for finding and posting this intriguing review, Rueful!

...'inner panther'....

[jamolivej]

One of the best reviews in my opinion rueful. And not just for the 'inner panther'!

[kygal]

LOL ladies! Thanks for the reviews GE2 and Rueful!

[judypatooty]

I'm with LTM, "inner panther" is a great descriptor for Rufus!

[midoro]

Thanks for the reviews GE2 and Rueful!

[artisanlibra]

His inner panther?! Yes, I think I can agree that Rufus has an inner panther, not just in this play.

I do love seeing all these positive reviews, for both the play & our man.  Makes me very happy that he is getting recognition for once; maybe it'll help him consider doing another play sometime in the future!

[GreenEyesToo]

We were lucky this time, AL - only two years since the last one. Usually there's several more years in between. I understand he only got to do Closer because the pilot for Dangerous Liaisons didn't get picked up. Serendipity!

"Botticelli angel", "inner panther" - these descriptions just get more and more outlandish, don't they?