Only two times in my life did I have to pause a movie halfway through, needing a breath of fresh air to take away the grave and real sense of despair these mighty moving images were projecting into me.

The first one, Kids, I saw at age 16, which was about the (sometimes panic-inducing) behavior of youth in the age of AIDS.

The next time this happened, I was in my mid-twenties, navigating the ideas of commitment, selfishness, and all that goes with grown-up relationships. That movie was Closer, and the black mirror of truth that story shows its audience: love and sex, sure, but also the blinding obsession, jealousy, and lust within us all. You can’t see Closer and not understand that transgressions live within all of us, even when not acted upon.

I was nervous to see it on the stage at the Generic Theater, wondering if I’d be okay without the convenience of a remote control halting the reality within the script. But I wanted to see it all the same, knowing it was lauded as one of the best plays of the nineties, spawning the aforementioned, Oscar-nominated movie.

Closer is aptly titled, as it forces us to look closer into ourselves as we watch the four characters (Alice, the waif and muse; Dan, the romantic egoist; Anna, the real woman; and Larry, the victim turned revenge puppeteer). The show was debuting just as Joel Osteen was being introduced to his larger, Bible-toting audience above us at Chrysler Hall. “We’ve got hope and faith upstairs, and sin and debauchery down here,” producer Jeannette Rainey said as we clapped delightedly. I hoped everyone was in the right place, as a mix-up would surely not result in a positive experience for anyone involved.

Nancy Dickerson and David Meadows.

We were told this is the Generic Theater’s first performance “in the round,” the theater technique in which the stage is in the middle of the room and the audience can watch from any angle, gaining differing viewpoints and perspectives based on their angle. “By placing the audience on all four sides of a small 12 foot square stage, we can literally and metaphorically see the events from every angle,” explains director Brendan Hoyle in the director’s notes.

Nancy Dickerson (Alice) and David Meadows (Dan) begin their first scene brilliantly. They are charmers (and charming, at that), with their flirtatious banter and not-too-dodgy British accents. In a few short minutes, we see what Dan sees in Alice— youth and beauty; all he needs to bust out of his obituary-writing rut and into the literary world awaiting him.

From my vantage point, I could see Dickerson tying me closer to the character of Alice for the remainder of the play. I’d seen Dickerson last winter at ODU’s Brave New World, and remembered thinking she was one of the best in that performance—even in a smaller role, and from the first scene until the last, she followed up on the potential I saw in her then.

Alice is beguiling and tragic, adorable, yet aloof, and quite possibly completely insane. All these notes Dickerson brought out in the nuances in her vocal inflections and twitches of cheek. The character of Alice is the best role in Closer,and Dickerson the best performer, so the combination was terrific.

Matthew Labarge and Nancy Dickerson.

We also meet the second-best character, Larry (played by Matthew Labarge, in his acting debut), during this first scene. It’s important to the story to introduce him early on, but mildly unfair to the character, as the depth of what Larry is capable of is hardly apparent in his few lines regarding knee scars and cigarettes. Larry is bundled in manly reserves in the beginning–and stripped to basic emotion (jealousy, lust, revenge) by the end, and is at times fragile, and at others diabolical. He has the most monologues and the loudest, raunchiest emotional scenes. To give these to an inexperienced actor like Labarge was a risky move, but I think it paid off, as he was able to expand more freely in his debut role, which will hopefully win him more acting jobs in the future.

Scene Two introduces us to Anna (played by the move experienced, and reserved, Alaina Coletti), a professional photographer shooting Dan’s book jacket photo (as he’s now in an established relationship with Alice, and has used her life story as his material). They are instantly attracted to one another, though Anna realizes quickly his behavior is inappropriate. Dan continues to stalk her, while staying with Alice (who knows of his obsession, but doesn’t know what to do about it). It is here we start to see how complicated lives can become when emotions can’t be swept under the rug (or bed, in this case). Dan’s honesty is perceived as sexy, but it isn’t. His honesty is actually selfish–he doesn’t want Alice to be with anyone else, wanting to protect and father her–all the while lusting and eventually winning Anna’s heart as well. Dan wants more than love. He wants excitement and danger, and he’s prodding himself into self-destructive experiences for the thrill of believing himself more important than he actually is. Played by David Meadows, another novice actor, Dan comes across as a snake, a lothario who is fun to watch, but not to befriend. He lures Larry into a chat room and pretends to be Anna, providing a new experience for me: live sex chatrooms via the stage. As their words become more and more graphic, as Larry becomes more excited and Dan more cunning, we as an audience become more expectant–what could they do next? How unraveling can this get?

This is answered in last scene before intermission. It is the loudest, the most blatantly intense (though intensity passes through the air in this play like electricity or radio waves–it’s there and heavy the whole time). Anna and Dan have embarked upon their affair and are leaving their partners for each other. Alice and Dan’s end is juxtaposed with Anna and Larry’s–all four actors on stage at the same time; our attention flipping between the two. Dickerson and Meadows play their version honestly, going back and forth between anger and desperation, holding each other until their knuckles are white only to slap away the hurt and the person causing it seconds later. They putter out as Alice wonders aloud, “Why isn’t love enough?”

Alaina Coletti and David Meadows.

Anna and Larry’s split shows us a different approach to relationship ending–the quiet anger and jealousy boiling just beneath a cool exterior. Again, due to the stage set-up, I was able to see only one character, Larry, during this scene, and could only hear Anna calmly explain to her husband all the ways and places she’s been having sex with Dan. Larry’s rage grows physically and in volume, with the final lines screamed bitterly into Anna’s face. Labarge did not hold back and I felt sorry for Coletti’s grandmother (sitting in the front row), having to see her grandaughter broken down and berated by an angrily emasculated husband

The Generic’s small room was highlighted for me during intermission, as I could easily hear my fellow audience members’ reactions.

“Careful dude, you’re in the front row.”—–“Yeah, it’s like Sea World up in here.”

“I don’t know what they’re gonna do next to knock us off our seats!”

“I’m gonna have to go upstairs for some Joel Osteen after that!”

My husband and I ended up in a group discussion with another married couple (who are regulars at The Generic) and a recently engaged couple. We found ourselves asking questions like, “If you were cheated on, would you really want to know all those details?” The men, in a three-way high five, definitively decided “NO. They would not.”

Regardless, the play prompted lively conversation from all corners of the room.

To be fair, all was not perfect at Closer. All four actors struggled with the British accents required by the London setting. While it was apparent they were off the mark in Scene One, by intermission, the they were all so comfortable in their roles–immersing themselves in the emotions of the characters more and more as the minutes ticked down, I stopped noticing the accents. I’m sure they still fluctuated, but I was more engrossed in the team effort of the entire show at this point.

From my seat, I could see above the theater, where the sound and light crew were. The term “cast” was never more apparent, as crew looked down with care onto their actors, ensuring all props were in the proper place, all extras off the set, before lighting back up. The music was all original, even, with Assistant Director Jonathan Bremner composing and recording the soundtrack (and selling it in the lobby).

In the end, was I in need of a pause button? No. I think the literary benefits shine through because the story is damn good. But the actors held back just enough to keep my mind aware that this was a story, and not as Hoyle hoped in the director’s notes, “the discovery that when one looks at the actions of these four people, finding the similarities to our own lives feels remarkably easy.” Finding the similarities took introspection at times. You had to think about quotes like “Ever seen a human heart? It’s a fist covered in blood.” You had to try and determine what really wins (ever): companionship or passion?

The characters in Closer don’t answer these questions, and don’t evolve beyond how they were when we met them. Dan, even in the end, is not crying because Alice isn’t there—he’s crying because he doesn’t have her. Larry’s last word is “coward.”

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