Closer

Pangdemonium! Productions

DBS Arts Centre/Last Saturday

It was probably not a coincidence that Closer opened after Valentine’s Day.

It is the antithesis of chocolate- covered kisses and mawkish sentimentality and when you do get a rose, it is a virtual one sent over a sex-chat website.

The play is about four characters in a daisy-chain of hook-ups and break-ups in modern-day London.

Writer Dan (Keagan Kang) and stripper Alice (Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie) are brought together when she gets knocked down in a traffic accident.

He later meets photographer Anna (Tan Kheng Hua) and there is an immediate attraction between the two.

Unwittingly, he helps to set her up with dermatologist Larry (Adrian Pang) whom he randomly encounters, and plays a trick on, on the website London F***s.

There is an affair, there are lies, break-ups and recriminations and that takes one up only to intermission.

Patrick Marber’s script demands a lot from actors because of the emotional roller-coaster ride they have to go through and also because the plot developments are barely plausible.

Larry is perhaps the easiest one to get a handle on and Pang plays him with a smooth mix of light charm and dark vengefulness.

Like a pendulum that swings back and forth, Dan is swayed this way and that between the two women and you never feel that you come to grips with the character. In part, it is also because Kang and Tan do not fully convince as a couple desperately in love and lust.

Perhaps the least realistic character is Alice the stripper, whose occupation seems to have been chosen mainly so that the audience can watch a pole-dance routine, which, by the way, MacQuarrie pulls off with sensual flair.

While some of Marber’s dialogue can be compelling and funny, it can sometimes feel too self-consciously clever and glib.

One suspects that Closer has been hailed as raw and edgy because there is the thrill of watching actors on stage spew invective and vulgarities at one another.

In the 2004 film adaptation, one even gets to see movie stars Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen get down and dirty.

The shock value starts to wear thin in the second half, and even the stylish direction and versatile set do not mask the fact that the audience is not exactly getting dazzling insights as the characters needle one another about love, betrayal and honesty.

When Alice mocks Dan with an outburst of “Do you have a single original thought in your head?”, it feels, for a fleeting moment, like a statement that is uncomfortably close to the truth.

(ST)