community + cultural info

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  contact: Karla Boos 412-638-7197 

 

Quantum Theatre presents 

 

Closer

By Patrick Marber

Directed by Karla Boos

November 7 – 23, 2003. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, at 8 pm; Saturday at 5:30 & 9 pm, Sunday at 8.

Press & Official OPENING NIGHT with party afterwards: November 7. 

 

The Jackman Building. Downtown at 6^th & Penn Avenues, across from Curtain Call.

Enter from the parking garage stairway on Penn – heck, park there too.

Tickets: $20, limited number of $15 student tickets with valid id. Please call ProArts at 412-394-3353. 

 

Closer is a cool, dark comedy of sexual desire and its evil twin true love. A brilliant, bruising, and bracingly adult new play, Closer is both funny and devastatingly sad on the subject. It recalls Noel Coward's classic Private Lives, but it's Coward laced with the nihilistic chill of Samuel Beckett. 

 

Closer has been a widely-hailed hit in London and New York. Originally produced by the Royal National Theatre and transferred to Broadway, it starred Anna Friel, Natasha Richardson, and Rupert Graves and won the London Critics Award for Best Play, Olivier Award for Best New Play, Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy, and was nominated for a Tony Award. It’s soon to be a film directed by Mike Nichols starring Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen. 

 

Closer is a slickly engineered and choreographed sexual pas de quatre, a comedy of manners with lots of laughter, but no happy endings. The title sums up the inability of four people to be close even during their most physically intimate moments. Closer sizzles with nasty, incisive and often x-rated dialogue. Summed up, Closer, is about affairs of the heart -- but a heart that, as one character, Doctor Larry defines it, is "wrapped in a bloody fist."  

 

Quantum Theatre stages Closer smack in the heart of the Cultural District, in a suitably raw space inside the Jackman Building. It is directed by Quantum Artistic Director Karla Boos, who admits undying fascination for this subject matter. The men are played by John Shepard and Tom Schaller – veterans of Quantum’s production of Pinter’s Betrayal, to which Closer is often compared. Women are played by Laurie Klatscher and Erika Cuenca. Scenic design is by Abigail Hart Gray, lighting design by Bryan Miller, sound design by Dave Bjornson, costume design by Richard Parsakian.  

 

Post-show talkback with artists, free to ticket holders, Sunday November 9. Pre-show receptions 5:30-7:30 First Thursday, November 13, and HUMP day (ask us about this one), November 19, at Cultural District locations to be announced.