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Read Julie York Coppens' article about the show in the Charlotte Observer: Real-life experiences, really well done
Closer Than Ever captures life's joys, sorrows with spirit JULIE YORK COPPENS (Theater Writer) Some musicals only improve with age. Our own age, that is. The first time Jerry Colbert listened to "Closer Than Ever," just after the revue's 1989 off-Broadway premiere, he thought it was ... OK. "Now, I think, `How could I not have loved this show?!' " says Colbert, a Charlotte-based actor/singer featured in Collaborative Arts' current staging at Spirit Square. Maturity, Colbert explains with a shrug, has added him to the show's passionate fan base among theater insiders. "It's filled with humanity," says Colbert, describing "Closer Than Ever" as a series of entertaining and often moving observations on a range of experiences, from dating to parenthood to the loss of a spouse. "All the songs address real-life situations that I think anyone who's achieved a certain age will relate to." The show, by songwriting team David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr. (also known for "Baby" and "Big"), is performed by a small cast -- five singers here, plus a three-piece band -- and little in the way of props, sets or costumes. "There's nowhere to hide," Colbert says. "It's an actor's show in a way that most book musicals aren't. The lyrics plumb the depths of human relationships -- and yet, it's triumphant." The revue is also hilarious at times. One number, "There's Nothing Like It," follows a group of Baby Boomers determined to get back in shape: "Now life is fun and free of all those tensions/'Till I run into the thing nobody mentions: PAIN!"In "Fandango," a working mom and a working dad keep asking, with ever-increasing rush-hour panic, "...if maybe/you'd take the baby?" It's the ballads, though, that elevate "Closer Than Ever" from the ranks of similar relationship revues, such as the mainly silly "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change!" "Everyone has an opportunity to tell a story through song. Everyone has a showcase," Colbert says. One of his own moments in the spotlight: "If I Sing," a musician's soulful tribute to his aging father, a pianist no longer able to play. "My own father will be 85 this year, and he's showing his frailty," Colbert says. "It's enormously difficult for me to sing that song (in rehearsal). Even though my father isn't the person I'm singing about in that song, I make that transference. And I lose it every single time." "All the songs are very personal," says Lisa Smith, one of Colbert's co-stars. (The others are Joseph Klosek, Dan Brunson and Amy Van Looy, with Marty Gregory at the piano; Elise Wilkinson directs.) "The song, `I Wouldn't Go Back' -- that is my life, after a really hard year," Smith says. "I sing that, and I'm like, `I am OK. I need to move forward.' Other songs are just funny -- like `The March of Time.' " "That's not funny," Colbert says with a dry laugh, "when you're my age."
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