New York Daily News - "Closer" Review

Love's Labor's Lost - Cynical sex drama 'Closer'leaves no room for hope

CLOSER. By Patrick Marber. With Natasha Richardson, Rupert Graves, Anna Friel and Ciaran Hinds. Sets by Vicki Mortimer. Directed by Patrick Marber. At the Music Box. Tickets $15-$60 at (212) 239-6200.

It used to be that the easiest thing for a playwright was to get all sentimental. Love, arriving in the happy ending, would conquer all. But now, sentiment is a sin. The easy way out is black despair. But is it any more truthful than the feel-good versions it has replaced?

Patrick Marber's "Closer" suggests that it isn't. In this play about sex and relationships, the one thing that cannot be admitted is the possibility of happiness.

"Closer" comes from the British National Theater in London, where it won all the major awards for Best Play last year. It's not hard to see why. The play is slick, skillful and fashionably bleak. Under Marber's impressive direction, it has a confidence and coherence that place it well above the average comedy of modern manners.

Marber's dialogue is sharp and witty. He wrings, at times, a surreal black humor from the most terrible situations. Taking two men and two women, he works through the variations of their mutual loves and loathings, attractions and betrayals, with extraordinary assurance.

First, there is the fragile, waif-like Alice, falling for Dan, a shy young man who writes obituaries for a newspaper. For a time, he takes over her life, writing a novel in which she is the central character. Then he falls at first sight for Anna, a beautiful photographer. She, in turn, marries Larry, a dermatologist. And from then on, it's a game of pass-the-lover. Anna betrays Larry with Dan. Dan betrays Alice with Anna. Larry takes up with Alice. And on and on.

All of this is done with energy and ingenuity. But after a while, it gets hard to care about the outcome of a merely mathematical game. For the play lacks a basic ingredient: a sense that things might have been different. Drama is about choices, turning points, mistakes. "Closer" doesn't have any.

Toward the end of the play, Anna and Alice actually discuss this, and agree that they chose their fatal attractions. But the problem is that we didn't see this happening at the time. In order to do so, we would have to believe that these people had possibilities — one of them being that they might actually love each other. And this Marber seems unable to imagine. Without it, it is difficult — even for the stellar cast — to achieve any real depth of emotion.

Each of the actors creates a completely convincing character. Natasha Richardson is elegant as Anna, Rupert Graves charming as Dan, Anna Friel appealing as Alice and Ciaran Hinds volcanic as Larry. But the script gives none of them the room to make those characters change and grow before our eyes; Marber is too intent on easy pessimism to allow that to happen.

In the end, "Closer" is too satisfied with its own dark vision to risk any real emotion. That makes it ultimately as cold and self-absorbed as its characters.