Patrick Albert Crispin Marber (born 19 September 1964) is an English comedian, playwright, director, actor and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.
Educated at St Paul's School, Cranleigh School and Wadham College, Oxford (where he read English), he was a 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, after working for a few years as a stand-up comedian. He 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. His 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 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. 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 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 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 Moliere's comedy Don Juan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role. 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 earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
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.
The comedians Richard Herring and Stewart Lee famously do not like Marber. This was borne out of their working relationship with him on On The Hour. Lee & Herring maintain that Marber took credit for material that they produced for the show, and it was this dispute that saw them stepping back from the writing team in the transition from Radio to the TV version The Day Today.
Over the years, the friction appears to have softened from a genuine hatred into "comedy enemy". When he is referenced by either comedian, it is usually as a running joke against themselves aimed at any fan who knows the history between both parties & is intended to solicit laughs as much at their own expense for previous vitriol as it is against Marber's indiscretions.
Richard Herring even went so far as to rename part of the male reproductive anatomy "the Marber" in his book Talking Cock.
