The Musicians: Patrick Marber

Patrick Marber; Director, Actor, Comedian, Playwright and Screenwriter. As I have previously explained our end of year show this year is 'The Musicians'. I feel it is vital  to look more into Patrick Marber. 

The following post is all of my research about this fascinating playwright.

Patrick Marber was born on September 19th 1964 to a middle-class Jewish family in Wimbledon, London. Marber is the son of a theatre secretary, Angela Benjamin and a technical analyst named Brian Marber. Patrick began his career as a stand-up comedian and performer in radio comedies such as 'On the Hour' and 'Knowing Me, Knowing You'.

Marber wrote his first play named 'The Dealers Choice' in 1995. It opened at the Royal National Theatre in a production directed by the playwright. The play transferred to the West End and has won many awards such as;

• The 1995 Writer's Guild Award.
• The 1995 Evening Standard Award for best comedy.

Dealers Choice was produced in many cities worldwide including; Melbourne, New York, Berlin, Chicago and Vienna.

Despite all of this, Marber now describes the decision to direct the production at the National Theatre's studio as stupid.

Dealers Choice is set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker. The play was partially inspired by Marber's own experience with his addiction to gambling.

'After Miss Julie' a version of the Strindberg play 'Miss Julie' was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this play, Marber explores 1945 Britain at the time of the Labour party's victory in the general election, Miss Julie being the daughter of a Labour peer. 

Marber's play 'Closer' is probably one of his most well known. A comedy of sex, dishonesty and betrayal; it opened at the National Theatre in 1997. This, once again, won another Evening Standard award for best comedy as well as the Critic's Circle Theatre awards, and Laurence Olivier award for the best new play. It has proven to be an international success having been translated into 30 different languages. A screen adaptation written by Marber was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen.

In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh professor of contemporary theatre at Oxford University. He was is also a director of Lewes FC, driving forward a scheme for the club to be community owned since 2010 whilst he was suffering from writers block and depression.

Marber also co-wrote the screenplay for 'Asylum' (2005) directed by David Mackenzie and was sole screen writer for the film 'Notes on a Scandal' (2006) for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards.

The musicians by Patrick Marber was performed for the first time in 2004 for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme and its first production was at The Sydney Opera House. 

We usually see Marber directing and writing material that is for an older audience and quite risque. The Musicians is a complete anomaly in this sense and I would say it's very different to what he had written before. It just goes to show that he is a man of many talents.

Marber wrote the play when technology was just progressing and no where near as relevant today. This completely changes the play in my opinion. There is a massive difference between 2006 VS 2021. Kelly has performed the Musicians before as part of the National Theatres 'Connections' project in 2015. Luckily, she has the chance to listen to Marber talk about his play and a note that they were given in 2015 from Marber himself was that he wrote the script and would like to see it as if it were set back in 2006. He did not want technology or social media to harm it in any way. 

There is a huge difference between school trips in 2006 vs now. All of the school trips I have been on from 11+ we have taken phones and iPads and technology in general. Marber wants the kids in 'The Musicians' to not be tainted by this and wants his characters to live in the moment.

After researching more into Patrick Marber I have began to love his work. I remember watching Closer and had no idea it was written by him until I started to do my research. I think he plays a big part of the industry and I have the up most respect for his work.