After more than a quarter of a century, Patrick Marber’s Closer retains its power to shock its audience.

That was audibly apparent on this opening night, especially among audience members too young to have seen the original La Boite production in 2000, and who presumably hadn’t watched the 2004 film version either.

Their gasps continued throughout Marber’s excoriating examination of a London foursome’s intertwining obsessions conflating love and sex. Sometimes it was at the situations, sometimes the extreme expletives.

The reaction surprised me, because social mores have become a lot less rigid since then in many ways. And it wasn’t what I recall from attending a matinee of the Australian premiere production by Sydney Theatre Company in 1998 (starring Richard Roxburgh as protagonist Dan), nor at La Boite two years later. It’s an interesting difference given that upending of social codes and conduct in large part drives Marber’s arresting 1997 play.

Back then, it registered as confronting, but laughter at the casual caustic outrageousness was probably more prevalent, and there’s still plenty of that here. And not by accident – Marber started as a stand-up comedian and sketch writer. The text is quintessentially English, juxtaposing...