Closer
Email any corrections or information to carole@cs.man.ac.uk.
Pictures reproduced with permission from the Closer web site.
Last updated 21st July 1998
Lyric Theatre, London, 31st March 1998 until 11th July 1998
The award winning play written and directed by Patrick Marber moved from the National Theatre to the Lyric Theatre.
Neil has took over the part of Larry in the transfer. Previews were from 19th March, opened 31st March.
Originally planned as a 12 week run, it proved so popular it was extended to the 11thJuly, and then
a new cast took over on replacing Neil and Frances Barber. I went on the 28th March and my Mum went a couple of weeks
later after my rave reviews!
Call 0171 494 5045 for tickets.
Awards
It has won the Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Comedy, The Time Out Award for Best New Play.
Plot
Closer is a modern London love story for the Nineties.
The play is about the obsessional love, the conflict between honesty and love and the gulf between men and women.
There are four players: Larry, an unreconstructed doctor (played by Neil);
Anna, a thirty-something divorced photographer (played by Frances Barber);
Dan, a journalist and aspiring novelist (played by Lloyd Owen) and Alice, a young stripper (played by Liza Walker,
and the only member of the original NT cast).
These four, strangers at the beginning, find themselves trapped in a tangle of besotted courtship,
betrayal and hate. Its funny but is it also grim and heart-breaking. As Neil and Frances have been saying in their
promotional interviews its about SEX. There is no actual sex, there is no actual violence, but the language
is very sexually explicit and aggressive. Not suitable for children or priggish adults!!
For all us computer nerds, Closer has the first on stage internet sex (see right). Dan and Larry have an internet sex chat
session where Dan is pretending to be a woman. Its very well done...two machines on either side of the stage,
both actors typing and a huge display showing the screen (of course this is pre-set up and controlled by
the stage manager). The language and net-etiquette is completely accurate. Patrick Marber, the writer, must have
been in an internet chat room! When I went to see it Neil told be that the screen hadn't worked in the afternoon
and they had to speak the lines. As the language is a bit rich that would have been interesting, esp. faking
the orgasm :-)
The really interesting thing about Closer for us Neil fans is that Neil was required to play some very intense
scenes with Frances Barber, who he lived with for 5 years (see left). They separated in about 1992, and Frances had been
a bit bitter about it. Frances reported on a Radio 2 interview with Debbie Thrower that it had been difficult,
but they were slapping themsleves and each other on the back for how they have dealt with it, and all the
history they have does show on stage. It certainly gives the acting some depth. Frances also mentioned
this relationship on the Jack Docherty Show, but Neil was silent about it on the Clive Anderson Show.
The timing of Closer meant that it clashed with the World Cup, and Neil was pretty pissed with this
(the dates changed on him after he signed up). He joked that no-one should be surprised if in July he had a "sore throat" :-)