Patrick Marber: Closer
Burdová, Mach
Contemporary British literature
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Jim Cartwright – The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
1)
April De Angelis – Catch
Hanif Kureishi1 – The Mother
Sarah Kane2 – Cleansed
Tom Stoppard – Arcadia
Alan Ayckbourn – Henceforward…2)
David Hare – Pravda
Harold Pinter – The Homecoming
Our choice
• We found the book cover elegant
• One of us had seen the film adaptation and
found it interesting
• Closer is a drama, which is generally a
well-structured and easy-to-follow genre
Patrick Marber
• Marber is a British playwright,
director and screen writer
• Screenplays: Asylum, The Tourist
• Plays: Dealer's Choice, Don Juan in Soho
• Closer opened in 1997 at the National
Theatre and was internationally successful
• In 2004, a screen adaptation featuring stars
like Julia Roberts or Jude Law was released
Quotation
“You’re not trusting me. I’m in love
with you. If you fucked him you
fucked him, I just want the truth.“
- page 107 -
Main characters …
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Dan – writer of obituaries
Alice – stripper
Ann – photographer
Larry – doctor
…and how they get along with each other
• Dan had been dating Alice when he met his old love Ann
• Dan arranged a meeting of Ann and Larry who then
started seeing each other and got married
• After a certain time, the couples started to cheat on each
other – Ann was with Dan, Alice was with Larry
• Eventually, the partners were switched back again
• However, these new relations didn’t last for long
• In the end, Alice died and the others split their paths
What we didn´t know before we read
“Closer“
• that men already pretended to be women in
internet chat rooms in 1990s
• that swaping the same two partners over and
over again was actually possible
• that the film and the book were quite similar
Conclusion
• Closer is about modern relationships in which
people are selfish and don’t care about others’
feelings but only about their own
• The importance of sex, infidelity and betrayal
in relationships
Resources
• Closer by Patrick Marber, Grove press, 1999
• http://www.k-state.edu/english/westmank/literary/contempbrit_resources.html (30/11/08)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Marber
(30/09/08)
• http://www.tobyyoung.co.uk/359/whats-wrongwith-british-theatre.html (29/11/08)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_playwrights_since_1950 (29/11/08)