Up close (play)
Hautnah is a play by Patrick Marber that was filmed in 2004 by Mike Nichols based on Marber's script as Hautnah . The play premiered on March 15, 1999 at the Music Box Theater on Broadway in New York City, starring Anna Friel as Alice, Rupert Graves as Dan, Ciarán Hinds as Larry, and Natasha Richardson as Anna. It was performed 172 times and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 1999. In the German-speaking countries, too, they played up close in many cities.
action
In short scenes, the play and the film tell of the interlinked relationships and fates of the writer Dan, the stripper Alice, the photographer Anna and the doctor Larry.
In the middle of London, the unsuccessful writer Dan and Alice, who has just come to England from New York, meet and immediately fall in love. Dan leaves his current girlfriend for her. A year later, when Dan is to be photographed for a novel based on Alice's life, he flirts with the photographer Anna. When she rejects him, he pretends to be Anna on a sex site on the Internet to the doctor Larry and arranges a meeting for the two of them. But Anna and Larry get along well and begin a relationship themselves, in the course of which both marry. But even this happiness does not last. Anna begins a relationship with Dan and all the protagonists sink deeper and deeper into a vortex of sex, greed, despair and lies.
Anna separates from Larry, as does Dan from Alice. While Anna and Dan become a new couple, Larry and Alice get lost. Alice works as a stripper again and is visited by Larry.
To get her husband to agree to the divorce, Anna sleeps with Larry, but when Dan finds out, he ends the relationship. He later visits Larry, who tells him that he is back with Anna and where Alice lives. Larry, who wants revenge on Dan, also informs him that he was spending the night with the stripper. When Dan forces Alice to reveal this, she ends the relationship and returns to New York, where she eventually dies. Anna and Larry, who were back together for a short time, are also separated in the end.