Closer Is Bleak, But Doesn’t Need To Be So Bland

Closer

A St Andrews Art Theatre Production

Byre Theatre, St Andrews

28/09/24-29/09/24

Directed by Aidan Monks

Produced by Millie Chew and Naomi Gibb

Written by Patrick Marber

Review by Callisto Lodwick

It’s not often that I can distil a play into a series of adjectives, but I think Closer demands it. Ascetic. Modernist. Bleak. Sour. Despite the original 1997 production winning the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award, there is little in Aidan Monks’ treatment of the material that is funny. Instead, Closer—the first student theatre production of the St Andrews season, produced independently with help from the Antony Tudor fund—is a cold, dour drama that only minutely thaws.

The show is marketed as a ‘sexual square dance’—though it’s not really about that, explains the director Aidan Monks. ‘It’s just about modern people, and the loneliness of the post-90s, post-digital, post-industrial world. Partners are constantly swapped and betrayed; people compete over truth and love.’ If it all sounds a bit depressing, that’s because it is: there’s very little to be cheery about in this play, and the few laughs the actors manage to elicit are swiftly quenched.

*Piper Richardson plays photographer Anna. Credit: Closer*

Part of this pervasive unease lies in Patrick Marber’s writing: his standard scene structure is a set of monosyllabic syllables asked by one actor and responded in turn. It doesn’t feel naturalistic—but that could be down to the performance of the actors, who spent the first act deadpanning their lines like a secondary school table read. The effect is one of horrific uncanny, with the exception of Dylan Swain, who brings a level of character and enthusiasm to his portrayal of Larry that marks him as too naïve for this world of subterfuge. The baseline emotional level rises dramatically in the second act as the actors warm up and battle around the plethora of things Marber leaves unsaid.

That’s not to say the actors are terrible. The violent, screaming fight scenes in the second half are a vast improvement on the limp attempts at anger in the first. An early scene casts Aubrey McCance’s Dan, coldly delightful in manipulation, against an overeager Larry; another standout sees Clara Curtis play a dejected Alice in a strip club (neatly lit by Willa Meloth); and Piper Richardson is vicious when the script allows her to be.

*One of the few really funny scenes involves a masochistic exchange on a sex site. Credit: Closer*

The set contributes to this sparse mood: the only concession to flare is the thrust stage; otherwise, the stage is bleak. Haphazard furniture is slammed onto a floor still pockmarked with tape; set pieces are tossed on and off stage as easily as the characters toss their tortured love lives about. The slimy unease is perpetuated by what actors do upon these plastic chairs and chaise lounges—a waterbed stands in for a hotel room, and the scrap of a sheet hanging off the corner sums up how grim everyone in this show is—or at least how grim this particular production has become.

Much of the budget feel is also owed to this show’s independent funding: unlike most productions in St Andrews, which are associated with some kind of overarching funding body, Closer receives money only from the Antony Tudor Fund and the Union’s Independent Project Fund. Monk is keen on this new freedom from society bureaucracy, and credits Closer’s independence to getting it on stage so quickly. ‘Mermaids put caps on the number of rehearsals you can have in a week, while we’ve just been working on this show all the time: in flats, in student halls, in the Barron. And things are so quick and easy: there’s no bureaucratic wall to getting anything done.’

Monks is also eager to emphasise just how much of a collaborative process Closer is. ‘It was very much a collective effort. I don’t want to take credit for anything: even when scenes have been directed, we have a process where the actors have tried it first before we tweak and change things around. As we work, I’ve loved discovering new little bits about the play: things that could only be extracted by literally putting the show on and seeing it play out. There are different parallels and repetitions; nerves of different themes popping up every so often. The writing is much more fulfilling than I thought when I first read it, partly because it’s written so naturalistically.’

Monks and I will have to agree to disagree on the last point: the original New York Magazine review called the play’s dialogue ‘short’ and ‘staccato’, and I feel it only serves to highlight the artificiality of the characters. Closer is a strange one, existing in a misty, far-off land of disassociation and chilly blandness. It’s not a play I would describe myself as enjoying, despite its occasional humour. Yet the minute the actors allow themselves to express more than a sliver of emotion, the entire show is heightened: it’s just a shame that doesn’t happen more often.