Patrick Marber | |
|---|---|
 Marber at the76th Tony Awards in 2023 | |
| Born | Patrick Albert Crispin Marber (1964-09-19)19 September 1964 (age 61) |
| 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. He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature in 2002.[3]
Marber was born and raised in a middle-classJewish family inWimbledon, London,[4][5] the son of Angela (Benjamin), a theatre secretary, and Brian Marber, atechnical analyst.[6][7][8] He was educated atRokeby School,St Paul's School,Cranleigh School, andWadham College, Oxford where he studied English.[9]
After working for a few years as astand-up comedian, primarily as part of a comedy double act with authorGuy Browning, Marber became a writer and cast member on the radio showsOn the Hour andKnowing Me, Knowing You, and their television spinoffsThe Day Today andKnowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. Amongst other roles, Marber portrayed hapless reporter Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan in bothOn the Hour andThe Day Today, and was involved in a dispute with the comediansStewart Lee and Richard Herring, who had written forOn the Hour, about who had invented the character.Lee and Herring's TV showFist of Fun would later make several references to their feud with Marber, calling him a "Cornish curmudgeon". InStewart Lee's 2010 book,How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Marber is referred to as a "new Shakespeare".[10] Marber reunited with theKnowing Me, Knowing You team in 2003 to recordcommentaries for the DVD release of the show. He also contributed some new in-character audio material to the DVD release ofThe Day Today in 2004.
He co-writesBunk Bed for BBC Radio 4, which he created withPeter Curran.[11][12] It was first broadcast during April 2014,[13] with the fifth series broadcast in 2018, with special guestJane Horrocks.
Marber's first play wasDealer'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 theNational Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Comedy.
After Miss Julie, a version of theStrindberg playMiss Julie, was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of theLabour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed byMichael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at theDonmar Warehouse,London byKelly Reilly,Richard Coyle andHelen Baxendale. It later had a production at theAmerican Airlines Theatre onBroadway in 2009.
His playCloser, a comedy of sex, dishonesty, and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won theEvening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as theCritics' Circle Theatre Awards andLaurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. Afilm adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed byMike Nichols and starringJulia Roberts,Jude Law,Natalie Portman, andClive Owen.
InHoward 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 theRoundabout Theatre Company openedOff-Broadway in March 2007, withAlfred 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 theSydney Opera House.
Don Juan in Soho, his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedyDom Juan, opened at theDonmar Warehouse in 2006, directed byMichael Grandage and withRhys Ifans in the lead role.[14]
He also co-wrote the screenplay forAsylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the filmNotes on a Scandal (2006), for which he was nominated for anOscar at the79th Academy Awards.[15]
In June 2015, his play,The Red Lion, opened at the National Theatre.[16]
In 2016 he directed a revival ofTom Stoppard's playTravesties at theMenier 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 forfive Olivier Awards[17] and in spring 2018 it transferred to Broadway with Marber directing at theAmerican Airlines Theatre.[18][19]
Marber's theatre directing credits includeBlue Remembered Hills byDennis Potter, (National Theatre),The Old Neighbourhood byDavid Mamet, (Royal Court Theatre, London) andThe Caretaker byHarold Pinter, (Comedy Theatre, London). In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.[20]
He directedTom Stoppard's playLeopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna, which premiered atWyndham's Theatre in 2020.[21] The play closed during the pandemic and re-opened on 7 August 2021 for a 12 week run, ending on 30 October 2021.[22]Leopoldstadt had its North American premiere at theLongacre Theatre onBroadway on 2 October 2022, with Marber directing, for which he won theTony Award for Best Direction of a Play.[23] He directedAlan Bennett'sHabeas Corpus from 3 December 2021 to 26 February 2022 at theMenier Chocolate Factory; the run was also delayed because of theCOVID-19 pandemic.[24]
Marber was a director ofLewes FC, driving forward a scheme for the club to be community owned from July 2010.[25]
Since 2002, Marber has been married to actressDebra Gillett. They have three children.
As writer
As director
As writer
As director
As writer
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".
