Yes, your intrepid Admin braved blizzards and bed bugs last weekend to see the Sunday matinee of Close Up Space. I’m very glad I did.

Before I go on I want to warn of minor SPOILERS in case any of you plan to see the play before it closes on Sunday, January 29. Otherwise read on…

Theatre is by nature a communal experience.

We were a bunch of back row renegades. Next to me on my left, two seats away, was an amply proportioned elderly guy who’d apparently booked an extra seat for his friend, an almost equally ample Bag of Food – much of it crunchy.

Before the play began the man attacked his companion with alarmingly noisy gusto. Thankfully the munching stopped, more or less, once the play began and the only sound I was aware of on my left was the man’s frequent laughter – and intermittent feedback from his listening aid.

Beside me Bag of Food remained inscrutably silent throughout.

It was during a key scene between David Hyde Pierce and Rosie Perez that I became aware of Snoring Lady two seats to my right. In a moment of panic I wondered if she was in fact experiencing breathing difficulties. Would this be the moment when I’d have to stand up, interrupt the players on stage and project from the back of the room the legendary words,
“Is there a doctor in the house”? A lady on her far side shook her gently awake.

Ah, the quirky charm of the matinee audience!

I have to say that New York City Center Stage 1 is a pleasant compact space with good sightlines from all seats, including mine at the very back.

Now for the play

David plays obsessive literary editor Paul Barrow. The opening scene is David at his sublime best. Using an old-fashioned transparency projector Paul, with savage red pen, pares down a letter from the principal of his daughter’s expensive boarding school to one succinct line.

“Your daugher Harper has been expelled.”

David is needless to say pitch perfect as the slightly intimidating, fussy, buttoned-up, professorial type who’s determined to ‘emaciate prose and make it obey’. He has a John Cleese-like exasperation that life refuses to submit in similar fashion. His frustration is punctuated by earthy language that made the ancient maiden aunt to my right flinch.

Many of us will feel some sympathy for Paul’s despair at the modern world’s sloppy grammar and punctuation. We quickly discover that his wife died four years ago and that since her death Paul has been incapable of communicating with his troubled teenage daughter, Harper.

Paul also has to deal with his star author, Vanessa Finn Adams (no hyphen!), a feisty feminist with the hots for Paul, played with zest by Rosie Perez. She has some great one-liners. “Gotta get em on the no fly list, Paul”, when talking about teenage children is one that springs to mind. She’s upset with Paul, for editing a huge chunk from her latest manuscript – he dismisses it as bloated chick lit – and for not making any moves on her.

Add to the mix the hapless, monosyllabic intern Bailey, played by Jessica DiGiovanni. She is basically terrified of Paul who treats her with disdain in the odd times that he notices her at all. At one point someone asks why she’s wearing a scarf indoors. She mutters, “Urban Outfitters…” by way of explanation, which for some reason made me laugh.

Then we have Steve, the office manager. I had reservations about office Steve when I read about the play in advance. ‘Wacky’ can often mean simply annoying. I was very wrong. Michael Chernus’s Steve is a wonderfully warm, scene-stealing, off-the-wall goofball. Paul discovers Steve camping in the office. You see, he’s been having relationship problems with his pit bull terrier, Xena (the Brooklyn Warrior Princess). Xena has taken a shine to his roommate and Steve is distraught.

Steve is the kind of person who befriends everyone including Harper. He reminded me of a big friendly mutt. He is the antithesis of the reserved, buttoned-up Paul, whose bemusement at Steve’s antics is played brilliantly by David. Steve shows Paul how he uses his tent, a 2010 Black Diamond, as a safe and secure place to open up about his deepest feelings, as Steve says, “to purge”.

When Harper, played with energetic relish by the delightful Colby Minifie, enters speaking Russian and throwing snow balls from a cooler at her father, Paul’s meticulously ordered world starts to spin spectacularly out of control. Harper later completely empties and destroys his office in an extreme attempt to get his attention, and we realise this crazy, fast-paced, absurdist play has a very dark core.

Paul’s wife, a talented author, committed suicide. It’s clear when Harper finally talks to her father (in English) that her mother was suffering from bipolar disorder. Harper is distressed that Paul made no attempt to help her mother and seemed to refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of his wife’s condition. When she splashed the walls of a room with yellow paint Paul had painted the whole room over in beige again by morning. Paul, in an attempt to edit life to it’s simplist elements, insists to Harper that her mother died because she didn’t take her medication.

The tragedy in the midst of this comedy is that Paul, in locking up his emotions has locked out his daughter. Harper’s actions are so extreme that we wonder if she’s inherited her mother’s condition. But we also see she’s intelligent and sensitive and understandably damaged by the tragic loss of her mother and rejection from her father. She explains to Paul that she has self-exiled herself to ‘Russia’. She quotes her favourite poet, Anna Akhmatova, who was persecuted under Lenin and Stalin and calls her father a ‘tyrant’.

Goofy, loveable Steve is the unlikely hero of the hour. When he finds Paul shivering in a corner of his freezing, empty office he is at once the light relief and Paul’s saviour. Paul has hit rock bottom. His star author has walked out and his daughter has left for St Petersburg in actual Russia. Paul ends up rolling on the floor in despair. David throws himself about quite a bit in this play. But Steve has Harper’s address and after some resistance Paul agrees to dictate to Steve what he’d like to say to Harper – from the safety of the 2010 Black Diamond tent. As there’s no paper in the empty office Steve writes on his arm.

Paul finally opens up to Harper.

I was transfixed as I watched David on stage. An unforgettable experience. It’s a deeply poignant scene as Paul, his vulnerabilty exposed at last, explains as he wipes away tears that he just didn’t know how to deal with his wife’s illness, and how much it hurt him that Harper was old enough to realise that he was a failure. Steve resorts to writing on his bare leg as Paul’s true feelings come tumbling out at last. I was laughing at Steve and crying with Paul all at the same time. Perhaps some light relief was necessary, but maybe the message is that, in life, tragedy, comedy and farce cannot be compartmentalised – or edited.

I know you were wondering, so yes, Steve and Xena worked everything out. Steve’s going to find his own place, but until he does the newly purged and mellowed Paul agrees to take him – and Xena – in. Paul makes up with Vanessa and is able to tell her that she is a good writer and he might even like to kiss her.

The Final Scene

Picture St Petersburg at night. The only light from street lamps. Snowflakes are falling gently. Paul and Harper pass each other in the street – then look back and give each other identical exquisite little half-smiles that express hope, connection, love. Close up space? Gorgeous!

The play moved at a brisque pace and had a good rhythm. I loved it and I hadn’t been sure that I would. The play worked for me because of the appealing and highly talented cast who found truth in the characters, which meant that no matter how extreme things got you believed in these people’s stories. I would like to thank the whole company of Close Up Space.

Finally, I’d like to say it was a privilege and a pleasure to sit in the theatre and watch the incomparable David Hyde Pierce act. Unforgettable.