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 6th & 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.