Entering District 01, one descends the staircase into the cleverly designed, sparse white space. Dramatically complimenting the script, this site-specific set has the perimeter-seated spectators sharing the actors’ space, ensuring that one can’t help but feel the emotion of each of the play’s tight vignettes.
The story opens with Alice (Katrina Rautenberg) being carried into a London emergency room after an accident by Dan (Tim Wardell), a passing stranger; and so their flirtation begins. A dermatologist, Larry (Michael Cullen), halts to inspect Alice’s shapely legs. Alice and Dan become a couple. Later, when Dan’s writing becomes more successful, he meets photographer Anna (Cat Martin) during a publicity shoot.
Several romances are pursued throughout Closer, as Marber turns the myth of ‘happily ever after’ on its head. The characters, driven by both a need for love and the need for sex, switch partners frequently, raising questions of contemporary morality. When Dan and Larry meet through an ‘adult’ chat room we are titillated and confronted by their brutal and sexually explicit language. Four letter words exemplify the fury and anger between the characters as they voice unspoken truths.
The tension of the language, together with the tightly choreographed expert acting, brings Marber’s play to a brutal climax.
Closer has one questioning the nature of truth, and asking if trust equals safety. We are assaulted in staccato fashion by the ideas Marber explores: love versus lust, kindness versus weakness, commitment versus insecurity. Is committed love a compromise? Or does companionship outlive love?
The play’s central theme revolves around truth, but as each character struggles with their personal truths, the consequences are betrayal, violence, and ultimately, heartbreak.
Rautenberg’s accurate depiction of Alice’s reserved character, morphs shockingly into her pole-dancing exhibitionist, ‘Jane Jones’, and her hysterical, tearful heartbreak at Dan’s cheating is poignantly acted and extremely well done. All the performances are both strong and confident, and compel the audience’s complicity in the dramas that unfold. There should be queues pushing into this Oxford Street basement to experience this iconic classic!
Apocalypse Theatre Company presents
Closer by Patrick Marber
Directed by Dino Dimitriadis
Starring Cat Martin, Katrina Rautenberg, Tim Wardell and Michael Cullen
District 01, 74-76 Oxford Street Darlinghurst June 10 – 26
WHAT THE OTHER CRITICS SAID
Aussie Theatre: “It is always good to see a new space tried for theatre and a young independent group undertake an ambitious project but perhaps Marber’s line “Please tell me the truth” was taken a shade too literally in this production.”
