So. Do you know how you have that book you read over and over and over again, so that you almost memorize the lines, that's how much you love it? And your copy of it is torn and gross and has coffee stains on it and is bent in all sorts of ridiculous ways?

Well, that's Closer for me. Except Closer isn't really a book, it's a play. It's a fast read, maybe about 30-45 minutes, and that's why I won't really describe it that much. I'll give the synopsis on the back of the playbook:

Four lives intertwine over the course of four and a half years in this densely plotted, stinging look at modern love and betrayal. Dan, an obituary writer, meets Alice, a stripper, after an accident in the street. Eighteen months later, they are a couple, and Dan has written a novel inspired by her. While posing for his book jacket cover, Dan meets Anna, a photographer. He pursues her, but she rejects his advances despite their mutual attraction. Larry, a dermatologist, "meets" Dan in an Internet chat room. Dan, obsessing over Anna, pretends to be her and has cybersex with Larry. They arrange to meet the next day at an aquarium. Larry arrives and so, coincidentally, does the real Anna. This sets up a series of pass-the-lover scenes in which this quartet struggle to find intimacy but can't seem to get closer.
Why do I love this play? Why do I read and re-read it so many times? Because it's emotionally brutal. It leaves me with a gutted feeling every time I read it.

The New York Observer describes it best as a 'cutting contemporary picture of sexual desire and emotional failure'.

There's an online review which says:

There is also a seemingly confusing divide between love and truth. At one point Alice tells Dan that she cannot love him because he wants to know the truth about her. Simply, love is seen as a lie, an illusion that must be maintained. The desire for honesty between lovers is looked upon as doomed to failure. One can desire the truth or desire your lover, but not both. At one point Dan tells Alice that 'it is the desire for truth that makes us human'. Ultimately, with Marber writing the script, this means the desire for truth perpetually shatters the illusion of love, and veriphiles are doomed to be alone.

How amazingly true. How amazingly me. Look, I don't deny that I've got a fucked up image of love. Those are my own issues. I seek truth in things and I don't think there's much truth in love. People want to put out the best version of themselves; no one wants to show their skeletons. So, you start off the dance with lies, which leads to more lies and at the end of it. . .well. . .all you have is an illusion. An illusion of love, an illusion of beauty but it's all lies. The only real thing. . .is sex. (Wow, I promise I'm not that cynical. I am. . .a little. . .but not THAT cynical)

Some of my favorite lines from the play:

DAN: What happened to this male?
ALICE: I don't know, I ran away.
DAN: Just like that?
ALICE: It's the only way to leave; "I don't love you anymore, goodbye."
DAN: Supposing you do still love them?
ALICE: You don't leave.

ALICE: I know what men want.
DAN: Really?
ALICE: Oh yes.
DAN: Tell me. . . (Alice considers)
ALICE: Men want a girl who looks like a boy. They want to protect her but she must be a survivor. And she must come. . . like a train. . . but with. . . elegance.

At Anna's art show:

LARRY: I know it's vulgar to discuss "The Work" at an opening of "The Work" but someone's got to do it. Serious, what d'you think?
ALICE: It's a lie.
It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully and all the rich fuckers who appreciate art say it's beautiful because that's what they want to see.
But the people in the photos are sad and alone but the pictures make the world seem beautiful. So, the exhibition is reassuring, which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a Big Fat Lie.

At Alice's strip club, where she is stripping for Larry:

LARRY: And what do we get in return?
ALICE: We're nice to you.
LARRY: "And We Get To See You Naked."
ALICE: It's beautiful.
LARRY: Except . . . you think you haven't given us anything of yourselves.
You think because you don't love us or desire us or even like us you think you've won.
ALICE: It's not a war. (Larry laughs for some time)
LARRY: But you do give us something of yourselves:
You give us . . . imagery. . .and we do with it what we will.
If you women could see one minute of our Home Movies -- the shit that slops through our minds every day -- you'd string us up by our balls, you really would.
You don't understand the territory.
Because you are the territory.
I could tell you to strip right now. . .
ALICE: Yes. Do you want me to?
LARRY: No.
Alice. . .tell me something true.
ALICE: Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off.
But it's better if you do.

ANNA: (Tough) Why did you swear eternal love when all you wanted was a fuck?
DAN: I didn't just want a fuck, I wanted you.
ANNA: You wanted excitement, love bores you.
DAN: No. . .it disappoints me.

My favorite line, because it explains so succinctly how I feel about love, or the falling of it. This is Alice confronting Anna about her affair with Dan:

ALICE: Why did you do this?
ANNA: (Tough) I fell in love with him, Alice.
ALICE: That's the most stupid expression in the world.
"I fell in love" -- as if you had no choice.
There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.
ANNA: Yes, there was.
ALICE: You didn't fall in love, you have in to temptation.
ANNA: Well you fell in love with him.
ALICE. No, I chose him. I looked in his briefcase and I found this. . .sandwich. . .and I thought, "I will give all my love to this charming man who cuts off his crusts."
I didn't fall in love, I chose to.

ANNA: They spend a lifetime fucking and never know how to make love.

ANNA: This is what we're dealing with.
We arrive with our. . ."baggage" and for a while they're brilliant, they're "Baggage Handlers".
We say, "Where's your baggage?" They deny all knowledge of it. . ."They're in love". . .they have none.
Then. . .just as you're relaxing. . .a Great Big Juggernaut arrives. . .with their baggage.
It Got Held Up.
One of the greatest myths men have about women is that we overpack.
They love the way we make them feel but not "us".
They love dreams.

DAN: I love you.
ALICE: Where?
DAN: What?
ALICE: Show me. Where is this "love"?
I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it.
I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words.

There's just so much I love about this play. It's so brutally honest. And it's like an onion. There are so many layers of lies and deception and . . . I could go into analyzing it and meta'ing it but. . .like I said above, it's an easy and fast read.

Not recommended to romantic idealists. This will crush everything you think or feel about love and you'll probably hate it. Recommended to romantic cynics like me.