CLOSER

Sex and death. What else is there? Not much, according to Patrick Marber, aside from the lies we tell ourselves and each other in order to avoid this stark truth. The view of human relations on display in "Closer" is summed-up by an email that obituarist Dan, posing as a woman during a strenuous and hilarious bout of cybersex, sends to dermatologist Larry: "Life without risk is death. Desire, like the world, is an accident. The best sex is anon. We live as we dream, alone."

There's little new there; those hoping for a shocking new take on the landscape of contemporary desire will be disappointed, though they will find the terrain well mapped. But those hoping for good writing will be well pleased, for this is, aside from a few youthful indiscretions, as tight, as sharp, and as urbanely witty a script as can presently be found in New York. "Closer" is what "The Blue Room" should have been; if it has little to add to Arthur Schnitzler's daisy-chain logistics, it updates him for our own fin-de-siecle with far greater panache than David Hare managed.

The characters—aside from Dan (Rupert Graves) and Larry (Ciaran Hinds), there's stripper Alice (Anna Friel) and art photographer Anna (Natasha Richardson)—are players in a complex, floating hand of relationship poker (Marber's first play, "Dealer's Choice," was about gambling) that takes place over five years. In a series of tightly-controlled snapshots, the playwright shows us only the opening bids, the trumps, and the sudden denouements—the beginnings, turning points, and ends of their affairs.

Indeed, it's all so neatly put together that some have complained of detachment; true, this is no tearjerker, but to ask for one is to miss the point somewhat. Despite its coldness and its anomie, "Closer" is so amusing and absorbing on its own emotionally damaged terms that Marber's belated effort to turn his characters into martyrs on the battlefield of love is his most pretentious moment. The play doesn't really need its sentimental ending, as Larry himself points out in a moment which feels as if Marber, knowing he's faking orgasm, is trying to have it both ways.

We don't necessarily identify with these people, though some of us might; but we recognize them, and the actors are almost uniformly wonderful in their ability to catch that ineffable sense of weary contradiction and limited expectations that afflicts those who've been round the block one too many times. There are some brilliantly observed arguments here. The women in particular shine: Richardson takes the wounded, hopeful self-delusion she brought to Sally Bowles in "Cabaret" to another level of complexity, and Anna Friel, who rose to fame in England thanks to a lesbian scene in a long-running soap, has become shockingly, unexpectedly good. Cute as a button and tough as nails, she embodies the tough sass that covers up the void at the heart of Alice's identity.

The men are less sympathetic: Rupert Graves starts out strong but fades somewhat, though the writing of his character does too, but Ciaran Hinds grows in stature and depth throughout, turning the initially buffoonish Larry into a man capable of living with limitations of which he's all too aware. "Closer" has been compared to Neil LaBute's film "Your Friends and Neighbors" for obvious reasons, and Larry supplies most of them; a self-confessed and self-loathing "caveman," he represents masculinity's current moment, dissecting his sexuality in the harshest terms while, incapable of imagining another way, embracing it. He has Marber's best line, too: "Thank God life ends. We'd never survive it."

Yes, it's the end of the millennium again, and "Closer" is very much of its moment; or, "The language is old. There are no new words"; or, "Everything's a version of something else." These people distrust everything, including art—which, as Alice's tirade against Anna's elegantly wasted shots of strangers has it, makes suffering beautiful for the benefit of rich patrons. The irony can't be lost on Marber, for he has managed to turn nihilism into slick, commercial entertainment.

—Ben Williams