Sketch: Nancy Carroll, Oliver Chris, Patrick Marber, Rachel Redford, Rufus Sewell in Closer

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Closer – Patrick Marber’s study about the brutality of modern relationships, gets its first major revival at London’s Donmar Warehouse and has already sold out.

When it premiered at the National Theatre in London in 1997 and the Music Box Theatre on Broadway in 1999, Closer won Olivier, Evening Standard and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards and was nominated for a Tony for Best Play.

Directed by David Leveaux, it stars Rufus Sewell, Nancy Carroll, Oliver Chris and Rachel Redford as the quartet caught up in “an agonised sexual and emotional square dance,” according to The Telegraph.

The Donmar website sums the play as: “Dan rescues Alice. Anna photographs Dan. Larry meets Anna online. Alice rescues Larry. This is London at the end of the twentieth century, where lives collide and fates change in an instant.”

According to the Evening Standard, Marber writes perceptively about our obsession with appearances, the perils of honesty and the damage we can do to others in the name of love. Holly Williams in the Independent summarises it as “hook ups, fuck ups and break ups”.

The cast all signed my sketch after Saturday’s matinée, Closer runs until 24 April 2015

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Drawing: The Recruiting Officer, signed by Josie Rourke, Nicholas Burns, Nancy Carroll, Mackenzie Crook, Kathryn Drysdale, Mark Gatiss, Gawn Grainger, Tobias Menzies and Rachael Stirling

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George Farquhars 1706 Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer was Josie Rourke’s first play as the new artistic director at the Donmar Warehouse in 2012. She assembled an impressive cast for this pacy and complicated piece in which big themes (love and war) are presented amid a riot of bed-hopping, social blockades, meddling servants and enticing legacies. Described as an unashamed celebration of love, lustiness and victory in battle and in the bedroom, it was a critical success, ensuring Josie’s tenure at the Donmar got off to a bright start.

On the 12th of April 2012, I managed to get all the cast on my sketch (Nicholas Burns, Nancy Carroll, Mackenzie Crook, Kathryn Drysdale, Mark Gatiss, Gawn Grainger, Tobias Menzies and Rachael Stirling) to sign it – not an easy feat given that there were eight of them leaving through various exits and often at the same time.

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