By John Lyle Belden

Eclipse Productions of Bloomington (no relation to the summer program in Indy) is filling the theatre niche of bold, provocative productions that Indianapolis has with companies such as Theatre Unchained or American Lives Theatre. This approach comes into sharp focus with their present staging of “Closer,” by Patrick Marber.

The drama premiered in London in 1997, the U.S. in 1999, and adapted into a film in 2004, and all versions are notable for their frank, unflinching look at intimate relationships – psychological and physical – among two men and two women who find one another in an unusual tangle of coincidence and dark serendipity. “Everyone loves a big lie,” one of them says, alluding to a major theme of the play.

Though it has nothing to do with this story (and isn’t played), if you couldn’t sit through the Nine Inch Nails hit of the same name (the “I wanna f**k you like an animal” song), don’t bother seeing this. But if you’re open to it, director Kate Weber has created what she calls “a piece of elevated theater masked in a raw and bold human emotion.”

“I never look where I’m going,” says Alice (Shayna Survil), her only excuse for stepping into traffic in front of Dan (Konnor Graber) where she is struck by a vehicle. In the emergency room, their relationship begins. A doctor (Jeremy J. Weber) notices the question-mark shaped scar on Alice’s leg – an injury she refuses to elaborate on, except to say it was from the wreck that killed her parents.

Dan, an obituary writer for a local newspaper, then writes a novel using Alice as inspiration. But upon meeting Anna (Patricia Maureen Francis), the professional photographer taking his book’s headshot, he becomes smitten with her. The pieces of our romantic quadrilateral fall into place in bizarre fashion when Dan draws the doctor, Larry, into his own twisted meet-cute with Anna.

Thus goes a sort of dramatic dance among the foursome, involving manipulation and betrayal as well as striving for authentic relationships and, perhaps, love. While we get very mature content and language, there is stunningly no nudity – even in a cleverly-executed yet erotic strip-club dance – as the focus is on the ravaging of feelings and souls more than their bodies. It all builds to final moments of reckoning, in which the devastating truth of the “crying girl” is revealed at last.

We don’t get a hero or villain here, just people drawn by very human impulses to do well-meaning or hurtful things. This is especially so with Graber’s Dan, a man in his mid-thirties who reveals an immature, needy personality. At times we want to like him, others to hate him. Survil maintains Alice as a sexy cypher, a hothouse flower in her late teens (at the beginning) just wanting to be kept, an American of unknown origin making her own way in London – as inscrutable as the question of her scar. Weber maintains Larry as close to “normal” as we get in this setting, with his own quirks and while fairly dignified, wouldn’t turn down a good shag if it comes his way. Francis (a/k/a Trick Blanchfield to Indy audiences) cultivates Anna’s own complexity, complete with a fortress of feeling at which both men tear at the walls. Her darkest moment is one of the most raw we have seen on stage this year.

Get “Closer” with performances Thursday through Sunday, Nov. 21-24, at Waldron Firebay Theatre (first floor of the Waldron Arts Center), 122 S. Walnut, Bloomington. Get tickets at eclipseproductioncompany.com.