La Boite have opened their 2024 season with the return of Patrick Marber’s engrossing and entangled drama Closer, directed by La Boite’s Artistic Director Courtney Stewart.
Closer weaves a twisted web of deception and desire that ensnares four Londoners over the course of several years. Writer Daniel meets the intriguing Alice when she gets hit by a cab right in front of him. Dermatologist Larry meets photographer Anna after a strange night on the internet, and Anna meets Daniel and Alice when she takes their photograph as Daniel prepares to launch his first book. Over the course of two hours, these four people fight, fall in love, hurt one another, make selfish choices, and seek retribution and forgiveness.
La Boite also staged Closer in 2000, directed by then-Associate Director Fraser Corfield. The play premiered in 1997 at the Royal National Theatre in London, and on Broadway in 1999. It was also adapted, by Marber, into a 2004 film starring Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Jude Law and Clive Owen.
Closer explores the highs and lows, the excitement and excruciating boredom, of adult relationships and the choices that must be made between love and lust. It also sets up a dichotomy between romanticism and pragmatism, and honesty and betrayal. Kindness is frequently contrasted against cowardice and these words are repeated frequently between the characters, generally as accusations. Closer also touches on the objectification of women’s bodies, both professionally and in relationships, as part of its exploration of love and sex as currency.
This production of Closer is played in the round and Stewart’s artful direction, as well as fight, intimacy, and movement direction by Nigel Poulton, created memorable scenes that overlapped characters in the same space. Like the Newton’s cradle that the audience could hear in the dark before it appeared on the stage, the play maintains a steady momentum and clicks backward and forwards between the four characters as they crash into one another and back again.
Design by M’ck McKeague included furnishings made from panes of rose-coloured glass, and items including a huge iMac desktop computer placed the play very specifically in time. The same pink glow was inlaid in the stage floor, which was otherwise sterile and white to evoke a museum, a hospital, a restaurant, and more. Each character had a distinct colour palette in terms of costuming, and accessories or props included nods to previous plot points and deepened the audience’s understanding of the characters. Lighting designed by Glenn Hughes and operated by Riley Camejo added significantly to the play’s setting, especially in the aquarium scene, and sound design and composition by Wil Hughes contributed to the emotion and continuing momentum of the work.
Closer concerns itself with the slippery idea of truth and there is also a strong thread of existential angst, especially in the character of Larry. The play asks whether people ever truly change – Closer’s continued relevance despite being almost thirty years old suggests the latter – or if we just create and recreate ourselves to please the people we love or lust after.
This production of Closer stars a cast of Queenslanders, although the intended ages of the characters suggested by the script were unclear. All of the actors maintained consistent accents, with voice and accent coaching by Helen Howard, and crafted empathy for their characters even as they made deeply questionable and selfish choices.
Kevin Spink played Daniel as sincere in his selfishness, always looking to stir the pot or create excitement, and his character held much of the play’s humour; his early web-chatting scene with Colin Smith’s Larry was especially funny. The character of Alice is essentially a manic pixie dream girl, catalysing the changes and connections by and between the other three, and this role was played with a bright-eyed, but sharp-edged, naiveté by Sophia Emberson-Bain. Anna McGahan played photographer Anna, coldly intellectual but privately emotional and enticed by the attention of both Larry and Daniel and their ideas of who she is. Colin Smith’s affable Larry began the play as the most likeable, but in the second act layers were peeled back to reveal the darker and more complex core of his worldview and decisions.
La Boite’s Closer is an absorbing tale of temptations and transgressions, deftly vivisecting human desire and the dynamics of heterosexual relationships, with excellent cast performances that delivered drama, humour, and passion aplenty.
Closer will be performed at the Roundhouse Theatre from 4 – 20 April 2024
For ticketing and further information, visit the La Boite website
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