Closer Than Ever – BroadwayHD

Dalton Harris, Kerry Ellis, Lee Mead and Grace Mouat in Closer Than Ever. Picture: Bonnie Britain

Closer Than Ever continues exclusively on BroadwayHD.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Award-winning producers Ginger Quiff Media and BroadwayHD, the streaming service for live theatre, are presenting this brand-new digital revival of the Outer Critics Circle Award-winning musical revue, with music by David Shire and lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr, from an original concept by Maltby and Steven Scott Smith. The new production is directed and choreographed by Stacey Haynes who was involved with The Lion King, Grease and Hairspray etc. It is co-directed by the show’s lyricist Richard Maltby Jr.

Closer Than Ever came out of an earlier work by Maltby and Shire and before that a revue by Steven Scott Smith called Next Time Now! It was based on a portfolio of songs Maltby and Shire had written called the ‘Urban File’, numbers influenced by the experiences of some of their friends. It dealt with unrequited love, dating, second marriages, ageing and the midlife crisis and other urban problems that impinge on our lives.

Following a staging at the Eighty Eights nightclub in Greenwich Village as a one-hour cabaret evening, Maltby and Shire expanded it to two acts calling it Closer Than Ever which was then premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts in 1989 and subsequently played the Off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre for over 300 performances. Since then it has been staged around the US and in London several times and enjoyed an Off-Broadway revival in 2002 as well as a record album.

The latest production of the show that Maltby and Shire call “a bookless book musical” was filmed at the Charing Cross Theatre in London. The performers are Dalton Harris, Lee Mead, Kerry Ellis and Grace Mouat. If nothing else it does provide a visual as well as an aural record of the Malty and Shire songbook. ‘Doors’, the opening song, sets the scene as they provide a theme throughout the piece as the minimal decor consists mainly of doors providing entrances and exits against which the quartet deliver their urban tales.

In ‘She Loves Me Not’ Mead and Harris anguish over the girl in their lives and when in ‘You Want To Be My Friend’, Mead offers to be Grace’s friend, the girl retorts by saying that she has enough friends and doesn’t need another. More problems come at the point where the foursome have to think about ‘Dating Again’, an area filled with all kinds of pitfalls. This is one of the most memorable songs, along with ‘There’s Nothing Like It’ in which exercise takes over when you’re looking for love.

In ‘Life Story’ the subject is a sensible divorce and, as Ellis explains, she is not complaining about being without a man, but at 39 just getting on with her life as a feminist writer and putting her kid through college.

All four get to shine in several of the songs. Ellis as a female estate agent in ‘Miss Byrd’ is a tough cookie, the ideal secretary at work but rampantly sexual after hours, while Harris admits to being ‘One of the Good Guys’, even if he cannot find a suitable relationship.

Mouat reveals that she is ‘Back on Base’ and Mead admits in ‘Another Wedding Song’ that it is not his first marriage. ‘There’s Something in a Wedding’ looks rather caustically at the rituals of marriage in that there’s always a cake, confetti, something old and something new. ‘Fandango’ describes the problems of finding baby care in a suitably upbeat way, while ‘Fathers of Fathers’ is a moving song about the generations. All these songs seem to be fit for purpose although they were written without any accompanying libretto.

However, there is one song that is quite unlike any of the others, and that is ‘The Bear, the Tiger, the Hamster and the Mole’ (a number cut from Maltby and Shire’s show Baby) which Ellis performs with great panache with the moral being that motherhood is a female prerogative and so it shouldn’t need to rely on a man to achieve it. The show closes with its title song which may refer ironically to the couples becoming nearer to each other (literally or figuratively) or the doors that are keeping them apart.

The cast of four perform well, accompanied by musical director Nick Barstow on keyboards and Meelie Traill on double bass. The simple but effective settings are by Andrew Exeter and the costume designer is Natalia Alvarez. However, without an audience to react or spur them on, this new production feels a little flat. It was filmed in a theatre, so an audience would not have been entirely out of the question. Anyway, it provides us with a lasting record of the work of two outstanding songwriters immaculately performed by a talented cast.

                                                                        Michael Darvell