‘Closer’ to One Person or Another

The love lives of the young couples in Patrick Marber’s “Closer” are in a state of perpetual motion. The characters just can’t leave well enough alone in the bedroom.

It’s an intriguing spectacle, but it also appears a little rigged. Some of the couplings and uncouplings feel like nothing more than the playwright’s attempt to keep the action churning.

So it seemed at the Mark Taper Forum in 2000, and so it seems in the Ella/jake production at the Evidence Room.

Still, the play and Leslie Ferreira’s staging generally avoid a soap opera quality. The gaps in time between scenes maintain an element of mystery, and the quick, short sentences that fly between the characters are much more original than the cadences of the soaps.

Obituary writer Dan (Scott Denny) is smitten by the stripper Alice (Jennifer Christopher), whom he encounters at the scene of a traffic accident. They move in together, and he’s inspired to write a novel based on her life. But when his photo is being taken for the book jacket, he is smitten with the photographer Anna (Kate Whitney).

In the play’s funniest scene, Dan poses as Anna in a sex chat room, and dermatologist Larry (Jim Round) gets so excited that he arranges to meet the supposed woman the next day. In the play’s most farfetched scene, the doctor and the photographer actually meet and launch a torrid romance that leads to marriage. Soon enough, the couples have switched partners.

The 1997 play’s most dated line is when Anna protests that she couldn’t have been in the chat room because she’s a photographer and therefore doesn’t own a computer.

The performances feel true, even as the characters lie, and the moody projections by Maiko Nezu add depth to the generally bare stage.

“Closer,” Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 8. $20. (323) 401-8071. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.