Word: closers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stage, playing Sally Bowles in a radically revamped version of Cabaret is one sure way. Deciding how to follow up that Tony-winning turn, however, is a tougher call. Richardson twice turned down an offer to join the four-person Broadway cast of Patrick Marber's hit London play Closer. Asked a third time, she thought it over for a weekend and agreed--not because the role promised an acting breakthrough but simply because she loved the play. "Writing like this," she says, "doesn't come along that often...
...Closer is a bruising dissection of modern relationships, in which sex is the subject even when it's not, honesty is frequently not the best policy, and people with choices almost always make the wrong one. The play opens with two characters in a hospital waiting room. Alice, who works in a strip club, has been hit by a cab, and Dan, a newspaper obit writer, has come to her rescue. The action never seems to leave the trauma ward as the two pair up with each other and, eventually, with Larry, a straitlaced doctor, and Anna, a stylish photographer...
...Closer is such a shrewd piece of contempo-realism that its shortcomings as drama might be overlooked. Marber's tactic of eliding large chunks of time--people meet; in the next scene they've been living together for months--stresses the impersonal power of sex but robs the characters of human dimension. The cybersex scene is clever but seems entirely detachable from the rest of the play. Like a skilled hooker, Closer is satisfying mainly in the moment; as a lasting experience, it leaves something to be desired...
...SLOBO AS SADDAM Yes, alas, the closer to the present, the more plausible the analogy. Air power alone will probably not depose the Serbian dictator any more than it did the Iraqi one. The bombing has not yet achieved even its first proclaimed objective of stopping Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. So, analogies past, we reach the unique dilemma of the present. One may feel a bit like the proverbial pedestrian at the crossroads who is asked the way by a motorist and says, "I wouldn't start from here." The story of wrong turnings goes right up to Rambouillet...
BANKING ON PRIVACY Don't worry if a bank teller asks how your day is going--odds are he's not a government spy. After a huge public outcry over privacy, banking regulators last week dropped proposed "know your customer," anti-money-laundering rules that would have kept a closer eye on every customer transaction. But be aware that under the existing rules, if you deposit or withdraw more than $10,000 in cash, you'll still be reported to the feds...