The play “Closer”, which gave rise to the film “Close Too Much”, premieres at the Varieties Theatre in Lisbon, directed by Ricardo Neves-Neves and live music.
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06/11/2026
by
Lusa
O Electric Theatre premieres next week at the Varieties Theatre in Lisbon, the play “Closer”, by the English playwright and screenwriter Patrick Marber, who gave rise to the film “Close Too Much”, directed by Mike Nichols.
Questioned as to why he is now putting this play on the stage, originally premiered in 1997 at the British National Theatre, directed by Marber himself, director Ricardo Neves-Neves attributed the desire to stage it to a possible “age crisis” in an 18-year-old company.
The will also stems from the fact that it erects pieces different from those used to the audience, and “Closer” allowed him to put back on stage live music. In this case, “a baroque septet that accompanies the whole piece”.
The story of “Closer” focuses on Dan, Alice, Anna and Larry, four strangers who cross paths in London, discovering that “love, attraction and truth rarely exist simultaneously,” said the director.
About this comedy that accompanies the cross-lives, desires, betrayals and lies among four strangers, Ricardo Neves-Neves stressed that the story of the play always ends up “to touch” the viewer.
In the text of the British author, the four characters not only give rise to “two couples, because the characters, over the four years (which is the time of the play) are related to each other,” the director noted.
Hence, he stressed, the action of “Closer” “increasing the issue of love stories”.
“ It begins by being a set of more or less casual encounters, nothing combined, things that happen without great strength of fate, or without great strength by the characters themselves, but these coincidences, these coincidences, is what will cause the characters to relate and create inside of each other wounds ", explained the director.
After all, “Closer” is the result of a matter of chance. “Look, it happened,” Ricardo Neves-Neves said.
For the director, the play depicts events and random events that happen in real life, which can bring “some hope or expectation of good things that can happen or the tragic or dramatic side of life [that] also happens with these small randomities that always turn, as snowballs can turn into gigantic things.”.
Neves-Neves also considered that the play “answers a very emotional side that the film has” and that this can be found by the audience differently in the voice and body of the actors who interpret it.
Because they are “very different” from the protagonists of the 20024 film (with Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen).
To interpret the play are Helena Caldeira, Sissi Martins, Vítor Silva Costa and Ivo Canelas, responsible for the translation with Margarida Vale de Gato.
The play is directed by Rita Nunes, scenography by Stéphane Alberto, sonoplasty by Sérgio Delgado and light drawing by Nuno Figueira and Tasso Adamopoulos.
As musicians are Ana Carolina Rodrigues (violoncello), Carolina Duarte (violin), Inês Nunes (viola), Juliana Mendonça (contrabass), Leonardo Guedes (violin), Mariana Godinho (cravo and keyboard) and Rita Nunes (saxophone).
“Closer” is a co-production of the Theater of the Electric, Cineteatro Louletano and Culturproject and will be on stage in Varieties until 13 December, with sessions from Wednesday to Friday, at 21:00, Saturday, at 16:00 and at 21:00, and, on Sunday, at 16:00.
From 15 to 17 January there will be four recites at the Cineteatro Louletano: on Friday, at 21:00, on Saturday, at 17:00 and at 21:00, and on Sunday, at 17:00.