Closer

If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking. Seduction, betrayal, and revenge tear apart the relationships and lives of two couples in this stunning drama by the Oscar nominated author Patrick Marber.

Directed by Matthew Greseth
May 3rd - June 2nd, 2007

Starring: Emily Blanchard, Nate Hessburg, Marcia Salveson, Jeromy Adler

(Urban Samuari interpretation of review)
"Mike Nichols's film version of Closer is quite good but Urban Samurai's live stage production at Old Arizona is exquisite and far more sensual. Matthew Greseth has directed Patrick Marber's play to spare and minimalist effect so that his actors achieve an immediacy that's disarming. It's an intensely intimate and multi-layered production. Many will appreciate the bisexual energy that pulses through certain scenes. Urban Samurai is one of our best up and coming theater companies."
- John Townsend


Live theatre has always been one of my favorite things in life. I have supported it in the Twin Cities since 1977 when I first purchased my Guthrie season tickets. Since then I have seen hundreds of plays at pretty much all the venues around town. So it is with that background that I say your production of 'Closer' is in my top five all time. I thought it was absolutely brilliant! As I told Marcia and Jeromy on my way out on Friday, my barometer of whether a play or movie is any good has always been did it draw me in...did I care about the characters? Your 'Closer' sucked me in by scene 2 and never let go even a little. I could actually feel the intensity and raw emotions that emitted from all the characters, and I LOVE that! The fact that the Old Arizona is so very intimate and one is so close to the characters just enhances the whole experience when the production is this good! I was shocked at the end when I realized it ran for nearly 3 hours...normally my ass would have been screaming for mercy after sitting that longÉbut I didnÕt even remember shifting in my seat! I was so wrapped up in 'Closer' I wasn't even distracted by the young Asian girls that giggled during the kissing scenes. I'm not sure I breathed during the Anna and Larry breakup in scene 6. Anyway, the bottom line is I wanted to offer my sincere thanks for giving me such a fantastic evening enjoying one of life's greatest pleasures, live theatre done brilliantly! - Matthew


How do you get to Broadway?
a) practice.
b) practice.
c) Why do people still go to Broadway?

Minneapolis once again proves itself to be "America's Hippest City" in its offering of this production of CLOSER. As a recent and voluntary transplant from NYC, I must say I had long ago given up and by now even forgotten what theatre was supposed to be: a piece of art that blows me away. I am not even speaking of the content of CLOSER here, the story. But rather, I speak of the heart, originality, ingenuity and just plan top-drawer talent that brings it to life on the Old Arizona Theatre stage. I'm not saying not to go to Broadway and pay $100 to see fluffy stories put to the music of old rockers. But for real theatre, and everything I once naively thought that to mean, consider yourself lucky to be in America's Hippest City. - Gary Drake


If all is yellow to the jaundiced eye, then Patrick Marber's drama about a romantic rectangle views romantic love through a lens smeared generously with mustard. The action begins on a London street, when shy newspaper obituary writer Dan (Nate Hessburg) meets the beauteous young Alice (Emily Blanchard), who has just been hit by a taxi. They flirt outrageously in the emergency room, stopping only for Alice to bum a cigarette from a doctor named Larry (Jeromy Adler). The play proceeds to hopscotch through time, and in the next scene Dan is at the studio of photographer Anna (Marcia Svaleson) getting a head shot taken for his about-to-be-published novel based on Alice's wacky life and times. Hessburg captures Dan's considerably increased self-confidence, as Dan attempts to seduce Anna moments before Alice (now his girlfriend) is due to arrive. From here matters go through all sorts of wrenching convolutions. On a lark, Dan semi-intentionally sets up Anna and Larry on an internet sex site, and the two become a couple, and *CHK then marry. Anna, unable to leave well enough alone, begins an affair with Dan, who eventually spurns Alice, who becomes a wig-wearing stripper, in which get-up she meets Larry (who is devastated over losing Anna, though he deviously engineers a mercy fuck from his estranged wife that effectively throws a spanner into things between her and Dan). It all sounds impossibly complicated, and it is, but director Matthew Greseth and his cast generate strong feelings and touches of humor. Executed with no real set and few props, this staging focuses the attention on the actors and the way they navigate the narrowing impossibility of their characters' plight. (It's a more intimate experienceÑa closer one, that isÑthan the well-reviewed screen version, which starred Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, and Jude Law.) As Alice, Blanchard walks a line between sweetness and manipulation, and Svaleson turns in a subtle and soulful performance as Anna. Adler, meanwhile, emerges as the linchpin of the thing, his character coming away at the end with the only thing approaching satisfactionÑand that by virtue of Larry's cold taste for revenge and ultimate heartlessness. Love indeed bites; the only question here is how deep it gets you. - Nate

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