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Closer  by Patrick Marber

Taken from the Socialist Review Index, click here to visit the review in it's original context. Please note that I have removed the naughty words in this version - I think Neil said a lot of naughty words in this play (ooo eer Missus!!) so it wasn't the sort of thing one would have taken one's Gran to see! :-)

Closer is a sexual black comedy involving two couples with criss-crossing encounters over a four year period. Marber is examining the problems of commitment and honesty in a society where relationships are dogged by our alienated attitudes to life and sexuality, where love is akin to possession. The result is pain, cynicism and power games, an inability to meet others except on our own emotional ground. Our experience of the play's vision, moreover, is heightened by its grim humour.

Dan (Lloyd Owen), an aspiring novelist who earns a living as an obituarist, rescues Alice (Liza Walker), a waif with streetwise sophistication, following a car accident. At the hospital they meet Larry (Neil Pearson), a dermatologist who briefly examines Alice. Eighteen months later Dan meets Anna (Frances Barber), a middle class art photographer, who spurns his advances. In revenge, he sets her up through the internet on a blind date with Larry in a hilarious and original scene where their sexually explicit communication is written up on a large screen.

Larry and Anna start a relationship, then marry. What follows is a frantic bout of partner swapping described by one critic as a sexual square dance.

Alienation is thus expressed in the way sexuality is divorced from emotional life. Dan seeks to conquer Anna, a more marketable commodity than working class Alice, in order to boost his flagging ego. Larry tries to win her back so as to repossess a valuable object and to punish Dan. As he tells him, 'I didn't f*** her to give her a nice time. I f****d her to f*** you up.' And Anna, a Catholic, uses sexuality to assuage her guilt. As she says of the two men, 'They spend a lifetime f***ing but never know how to make love.'

The play shows how society commodifies both sex and human beings in general. This in turn creates pressures on all of us to behave dishonestly. Both men and women practice dishonesty but, according to Marber, men are guiltier insofar as they induce women to be dishonest. Men require women to appear and behave in ways that elevate their self esteem. For example, Anna fakes orgasms in order to please both Dan and Larry.

Sexual dishonesty is part of a general lack of integrity. Alice suggests that Anna is lying in her photography when she prettifies the sadness of down and outs for the benefit of 'the rich f****ers who appreciate art' and 'say it's beautiful because that's what they want to see'. Larry, abandoned by Anna, drops his principles and enters private practice.

The sexual merry go round is also perhaps a metaphor for the typical alienated relationships of modern capitalist society, as Marber suggests through the irony of the title. We bump into people, engage with them superficially and move on.

However, the characters have real substance and are portrayed with genuine sympathy and wit. Dan and Larry are not just selfish chauvinists but betray a vulnerable side, not only the outwardly tough and upwardly mobile Larry but also the sophisticated Dan who at times resembles a defenceless adolescent. The play is spiced with sparkling dialogue which, with four fine performances, tempers its onesidedly gloomy picture, making for an entertaining as well as an enlightening evening.