AVID Theatre returns to bakery@1812 with the Olivier Award-winning modern classic about four people who discover that getting closer can be the most dangerous thing of all.
What happens when the person you love becomes the person who knows exactly how to hurt you?
This October, AVID Theatre and The 1812 Theatre present Patrick Marber’s CLOSER, the provocative, darkly funny and fiercely intelligent relationship drama that has lost none of its power almost three decades after its acclaimed London premiere.
Playing for a strictly limited season from 28 October to 7 November 2026 at the intimate bakery@1812 in Upper Ferntree Gully, CLOSER places its audience just metres from four people caught in an increasingly destructive cycle of attraction, love, sex, jealousy, betrayal and revenge.
“Love is a lie we tell ourselves.”
Set in London at the end of the twentieth century, CLOSER follows four strangers whose lives collide almost by accident.
Dan meets Alice. Anna photographs Dan. Larry meets Anna. Attraction becomes intimacy, intimacy becomes possession, and the desire to know the truth gradually becomes more dangerous than the lies themselves.
Over the course of their intertwined relationships, Dan, Alice, Anna and Larry fall in love, fall out of love, betray one another and repeatedly demand complete honesty — even when the answers have the power to destroy them.
Seductive, savage and frequently very funny, Marber’s play strips away the polite language of romance to examine the jealousy, obsession, vulnerability and cruelty that can exist beneath intimacy.
First staged at London’s National Theatre in 1997, CLOSER won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and went on to international acclaim, including a Broadway production and the celebrated 2004 film adaptation directed by Mike Nichols.
For director Michael Fenemore, however, the power of CLOSER lies in experiencing Marber’s story live rather than at the safe distance of a cinema screen.
“CLOSER is uncomfortable because everybody in it wants something we recognise; to be loved, to be desired and to know the truth,” Fenemore says. “The problem is that truth becomes a weapon. These characters keep demanding complete honesty from each other and then discover they may not actually be able to survive it.”
“The bakery is the perfect space for this play because the audience is incredibly close. There’s nowhere for the actors to hide and nowhere for the audience to retreat. You’re effectively in the room with these four people as their relationships begin to fracture.”
The production features Abby Pettigrew as Alice, Tim Cox as Dan, Kate Lawson as Anna and Michael Fenemore as Larry.
Fenemore also directs the production, continuing AVID Theatre’s relationship with bakery@1812 following the company’s 2025 staging of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
The new production takes a deliberately stripped-back approach to Marber’s world, placing the psychological battle between the four characters at the centre of the theatrical experience. A minimalist visual language, heightened lighting and an atmospheric soundscape create a world in which emotional distance and physical intimacy exist side by side.
At its heart, CLOSER asks an unsettlingly simple question:
How close can you get to another person before you destroy each other?
Raw. Sexy. Darkly funny. Uncomfortably human.
CLOSER is a play about people desperate for intimacy — and the terrible things they do when they finally get it.
October 28 – November 7
1812theatre.com.au
Image: Bernie Phelan Media
