Patrick Marber | |
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 Marber at the 76th Tony Awards in 2023 | |
| Born | Patrick Albert Crispin Marber 19 September 1964 |
| Education | Wadham College, Oxford (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Comedian, playwright, director, actor, screenwriter |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
Patrick Albert Crispin Marber (born 19 September 1964) [1] is an English comedian, playwright, [2] director, actor, and screenwriter.
Marber was born and raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Wimbledon, London, [3] [4] the son of Angela (Benjamin), a theatre secretary, and Brian Marber, a technical analyst. [5] [6] [7] He was educated at Rokeby School, St Paul's School, Cranleigh School, and Wadham College, Oxford where he studied English. [8]
After working for a few years as a stand-up comedian, primarily as part of a comedy double act with author Guy Browning, Marber became a writer and cast member on the radio shows On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You , and their television spinoffs The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge . Amongst other roles, Marber portrayed hapless reporter Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan in both On the Hour and The Day Today , and was involved in a dispute with the comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, who had written for On the Hour , about who had invented the character. Lee and Herring's TV show Fist of Fun would later make several references to their feud with Marber, calling him a "Cornish curmudgeon". In Stewart Lee's 2010 book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Marber is referred to as a "new Shakespeare". [9] Marber reunited with the Knowing Me, Knowing You team in 2003 to record commentaries for the DVD release of the show. He also contributed some new in-character audio material to the DVD release of The Day Today in 2004.
He co-writes Bunk Bed for BBC Radio 4, which he created with Peter Curran. [10] [11] It was first broadcast during April 2014, [12] with the fifth series broadcast in 2018, with special guest Jane Horrocks.
Marber's first play was Dealer's Choice , which he also directed. Set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker (and partly inspired by his own experiences with gambling addiction), it opened at the National Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Comedy.
After Miss Julie , a version of the Strindberg play Miss Julie , was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of the Labour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed by Michael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at the Donmar Warehouse, London by Kelly Reilly, Richard Coyle and Helen Baxendale. It later had a production at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in 2009.
His play Closer , a comedy of sex, dishonesty, and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won the Evening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. A film adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen.
In Howard Katz, his next play, Marber presented very different subject matter: a middle-aged man struggling with life, death and religion. This was first performed in 2001, again at the National Theatre, but was less favourably received by the critics and has been less of a commercial success than some of his other work. A new production by the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Off-Broadway in March 2007, with Alfred Molina in the title role. A play for young people, The Musicians, about a school orchestra's visit to Russia, was performed for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2004, its first production being at the Sydney Opera House.
Don Juan in Soho , his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedy Dom Juan , opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role. [13]
He also co-wrote the screenplay for Asylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the film Notes on a Scandal (2006), for which he was nominated for an Oscar at the 79th Academy Awards. [14]
In June 2015, his play, The Red Lion, opened at the National Theatre. [15]
In 2016 he directed a revival of Tom Stoppard's play Travesties at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London which, after a sell-out run, transferred with the same cast to the Apollo Theatre in the West End. The revival was nominated for five Olivier Awards [16] and in spring 2018 it transferred to Broadway with Marber directing at the American Airlines Theatre. [17] [18]
Marber's theatre directing credits include Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter, (National Theatre), The Old Neighbourhood by David Mamet, (Royal Court Theatre, London) and The Caretaker by Harold Pinter, (Comedy Theatre, London). In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University. [19]
He directed Tom Stoppard's play Leopoldstadt , set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna, which premiered at Wyndham's Theatre in 2020. [20] The play closed during the pandemic and re-opened on 7 August 2021 for a 12 week run, ending on 30 October 2021. [21] Leopoldstadt had its North American premiere at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway on 2 October 2022, with Marber directing, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. [22] He directed Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus from 3 December 2021 to 26 February 2022 at the Menier Chocolate Factory; the run was also delayed because of the pandemic. [23]
Marber was a director of Lewes FC, driving forward a scheme for the club to be community owned from July 2010. [24]
Since 2002, Marber has been married to actress Debra Gillett. They have three children.
As writer
As director
As writer
As director
As writer
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Travesties is a 1974 play by Tom Stoppard. It centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an old man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all of whom were living in Zürich at that time.
John Lamin Wood was an English actor, known for his performances in Shakespeare and his lasting association with Tom Stoppard. In 1976, he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Stoppard's Travesties. He was nominated for two other Tony Awards for his roles in Sherlock Holmes (1975) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1968). In 2007, Wood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year Honours List. Wood also appeared in WarGames, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Ladyhawke, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Orlando, Shadowlands, The Madness of King George, Richard III, Sabrina, and Chocolat.
Miss Julie is a naturalistic play written in 1888 by August Strindberg. It is set on Midsummer's Eve and the following morning, which is Midsummer and the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist. The setting is an estate of a count in Sweden. Miss Julie is drawn to a senior servant, a valet named Jean, who is well-traveled and well-read. The action takes place in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's manor, where Jean's fiancée, a servant named Christine, cooks and sometimes sleeps while Jean and Miss Julie talk.
After Miss Julie is a 1995 play by Patrick Marber which relocates August Strindberg's naturalist tragedy, Miss Julie (1888), to an English country house in July 1945. The re-imagining of the events of Strindberg's original are transposed to the night of the British Labour Party's "landslide" election victory.
Thomas Anthony Hollander is a British actor. Hollander trained with National Youth Theatre and won the Ian Charleson Award in 1992 for his performance as Witwoud in The Way of the World. He made his Broadway debut in the David Hare play The Judas Kiss in 1998. His performance as Henry Carr in a revival of the Tom Stoppard play Travesties earned nominations for both the Olivier Award and Tony Award.
Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by actor/manager Charles Wyndham. Located on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, it was designed c. 1898 by W. G. R. Sprague, the architect of six other London theatres between then and 1916. It was designed to seat 759 patrons on three levels; later refurbishment increased this to four seating levels. The theatre was Grade II* listed by English Heritage in September 1960.
Patrick Kerr is an American actor, currently recurring as small town grocer "Mr. Johnson" on Apple TV's "The Big Door Prize" starring Chris O'Dowd.
Catherine Russell is a British stage, television and screen actress.
Habeas Corpus is a stage comedy in two acts by the English author Alan Bennett. It was first performed at the Lyric Theatre in London on 10 May 1973, with Alec Guinness in the central role. It ran, with cast changes, until 10 August 1974. The Broadway production that followed was less successful, running for less than three months. The play has been revived several times since then, in London and elsewhere.
The Menier Chocolate Factory is a 180-seat Off-West End theatre, which comprises a bar and theatre offices.
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Soulpepper is a Toronto, Ontario-based theatre company founded to present classic plays. The following is a chronological list of the productions that it has staged since its inception.
Clare Foster is a British actress, known for portraying the role of PC Millie Brown in the ITV series The Bill. Foster appeared in the 2011 London revival production of Crazy for You, which played at the Novello Theatre, in the 2016-2017 revival production of Tom Stoppard's Travesties first at the Menier Chocolate Factory and later at the Apollo Theatre and in the 2018 West End revival of Consent.
Salisbury Playhouse is a theatre in the English city of Salisbury, Wiltshire. Built in 1976, it comprises the 517-seat Main House and the 149-seat Salberg Studio, a rehearsal room, a daytime café, and a community and education space. It is part of Arts Council England's National Portfolio of Organisations, and also receives regular funding from Wiltshire Council and Salisbury City Council.
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Leopoldstadt is a dramatic stage play written by British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard. The original production premiered on 25 January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End. The play is set among the wealthy Jewish community in Vienna, in the first half of the 20th century and follows the lives of "a prosperous Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in the East".
Marber grew up in a middle class Jewish home in Wimbledon. "I consider myself a Jewish writer, like all my heroes: Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Woody Allen".
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