Patrick Marber.

Acclaimed British playwright Patrick Marber brings his caustic brand of comedy to the Laura Pels Theatre with Howard Katz.

An interview by John Istel

It's a sight common to any large city: a disheveled middle-aged man sits alone in public, mumbling and shouting to ghosts and gods. Patrick Marber's tragi-comedy Howard Katz begins and ends with such a scene, as the title character, a 50-year-old newly homeless man, contemplates suicide on a London park bench. Between the opening and closing images, a play emerges from Howard's memory and imagination as he relives 18 months in his life as a snarky workaholic C-list talent agent, a son of a Jewish barber, and a husband to a frustrated wife.

In many ways, the role of Howard Katz symbolically represents most of the British playwright's characters, none of whom are literally homeless, but all of whom are emotional vagrants, drifters of the heart, vagabonds of the soul. As Howard's life falls apart in some uber-midlife crisis, he tries to find an inner home, a sanctuary from his psychic scars first through gambling, then through begging, and finally through praying.

Most Americans will be familiar with the one-time stand-up comedian's work, thanks primarily to his second play, Closer, which enjoyed a six-month Broadway run in 1999. In 2004 it was made into an award-winning feature film by Mike Nichols. In the roundelay of recriminating relationships, none of the four characters (played by Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Natalie Portman in the movie), can seem to find a stable emotional connection. Two of the characters initially establish their relationship through the digitized intimacy of the Internet. All are philanderers who only work skin deep: one guy's a dermatologist, the other writes obituaries for a newspaper; one woman is a former stripper and the other a photographer. Yet imbued with Marber's wit and lacerating one-liners, these characters' surfaces crack, allowing tragic undertones to eddy forth from their shallow inner lives.

Likewise, Marber's first play, Dealer's Choice, which is set in a north London restaurant, features an all-male cast who mask their truest deep feelings behind the poker faces they employ at their regular card game. Like Howard and the Closer quartet, they fight to keep their balance in spite of the volcanic spew threatening to arise from their depths.

Marber, now in his early 40s and married, with three young children, suggests that the midlife crisis portrayed in Howard Katz is not written from any personal experience. “It's perhaps more a preventative or self-warning,” he says, just as Dealer's Choice helped cleave him from obsessive gambling and Closer cauterized inner wounds from earlier betrayals and infidelities. As he told another interviewer, “I'm very interested in writing about people who I suppose are a bit like me, people who are slightly morally dubious and don't always behave impeccably, because those are the characters I enjoy writing dialogue for.”

At the end of last year, Marber was a busy man. Just after meeting with Roundabout regarding Howard Katz, he scrambled back to the U.K. as previews were set to begin on his newest stage work (a loose adaptation of Molière called Don Juan in Soho) at London's esteemed Donmar Warehouse. It opened a few weeks before the release of the Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett film Notes on a Scandal, for which Marber adapted the screenplay. Amid this hubbub, he spoke with Front & Center from the English countryside.

FRONT & CENTER: The opening and closing image of Howard Katz-a homeless man in a park-is a common image in New York City.

PATRICK MARBER: Unfortunately, it is in London as well...

Did you begin writing this play because you'd been struck by such an image?

Well, I did have the idea that the whole play would occur in this city park. But no, a play of mine usually begins with a bit of language, with the tone and voice of the characters. I had this notion that I wanted to write a play with a true protagonist, not with an ensemble cast like Closer and Dealer's Choice, the other plays I've written. I wanted to spend time with one character.

I found all these scraps of paper that I had about this character and he didn't fit into any of my other plays. I started from that. In a desk drawer I must have had 50 or 60 scenes. I wrote the play in a collage fashion around certain events-his birthday, his father's death. What the audience is seeing is a new draft of the play at Roundabout and director Douglas Hughes and I have worked very hard on it. In London, I never got the script as I wanted it. I was never entirely happy with that version, even though it was published.

Your recently released film Notes on a Scandal reminds me that your plays are very cinematic in the way they handle time and narrative. Do you use different approaches? Or, to put it another way, why did Howard Katz come out as a play rather than a screenplay?

Well, my approach is the same: What's the story? Who are these people? And what are they doing and why? And then, I find how best to tell it. But I'm conscious that movie stories tend to be told in images, though I haven't really adhered to this supposed convention in the films I've written!

Howard Katz is a play because that's how it presented itself to me first. I knew it would be carried in language, his language, his 'voice.' And if you want to get a voice heard the stage is the best place to do that. One might say that one of the propositions of Howard Katz is, 'What would it take to render a verbose man speechless?' Again, theatre is best to explore this.

How completely did you rewrite the script for this Roundabout production?

It's just tightened up here and there. I discovered certain things work and others scenes are unnecessary. Nothing too major, generally cuts, trims, clarifications. I've done all this with the help of Doug Hughes. We've gone over the entire play and really tightened it up. He's a marvelous guide to these revisions. I didn't have that luxury with the first production because I also directed it.

For example, I noticed you changed the tour that one of Howard Katz's actor-client's accepts from a Christmas pantomime to a part in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Yes. Nothing against that musical, but we thought U.S. audiences might not appreciate the reference to British panto.

“A play of mine usually begins with a bit of language, with the tone and voice of the characters.”

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You began playwriting with a bit of a bang...

I was incredibly fortunate to have written my first play, Dealer's Choice, at the Royal National Theatre and they let me direct it. I'm very grateful to Richard Eyre for that opportunity.

Most U.S. audience members know your work from the film and Broadway versions of Closer, but you first enjoyed an acclaimed career in England as a comedian and comedy writer, winning British Comedy Awards for Best Radio Series AND for Best New TV Series. Can you talk a little about that?

Well, I left college where I was at Oxford University studying English literature in 1986, 20 years ago, and went straight into being a standup comedian in London. I performed in various clubs, did the touring circuit, and the Edinburgh Fringe. I did that for about three or four years. And when I got cast in a radio show called “On the Hour,” that was really my big break. That was in 1990. And I met a group of very talented young comedy writers who were actors and we all stayed together for the next five years or so making radio and television programs. One of which was Knowing Me, Knowing You. That's very much Steve Coogan, with whom I've collaborated a lot. I sort of became his main writer, really, and co-created the character of Alan Partridge with him. It was quite a success.

Can you explain to American audiences who Alan Partridge is?

He's seen on BBC World so he's not that well known, but he does have a sort of cult following in America. Steve Coogan, who's become a little bit famous after he was in the indie film 24 Hour Party People, plays Alan Partridge. He's a talk show host, somewhat like Larry Sanders. However, he interviews fake guests, which is the difference. It's a completely mock chat show. And I played a number of the guests during the TV series.

Yes, I noticed you act as well as write and direct.

I performed in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow on the West End several years ago...

And that's interesting because it features entertainment world slime balls not unlike Howard Katz. In Speed-the-Plow, Bobby Gould is a shameless, lowlife producer but was so intriguing Mamet wrote a one-act follow-up called “Bobby Gould in Hell”...

Yes, but I didn't play Bobby Gould, who I admit is cut from the same cloth as Howard Katz. I played Charlie Fox. In fact, it's quite a coincidence that Alfred Molina also played Charlie Fox for the National Theatre in the 1989 production in which Rebecca Pidgeon appeared and that's how she and Mamet met. To my mind, the great story of the Roundabout production is Alfred Molina, who is a wonderful actor who I admire tremendously.

How did Alfred Molina become involved in this production?

Well, a mutual friend sent Fred the play back in 2001. Fred sent me an e-mail saying he loved it and wanted to do it. I sent the play to Todd Haimes and told him Fred fancied it. Todd sent the play to Doug with the same info. Then we waited for the Laura Pels to be built and for Fred to become available. This took five years. Having spent some time in the rehearsal room with Fred and Doug I can honestly say the wait was well worth it.

Was there anything you learned from your standup performance career that has helped your playwriting?

Well, the primary lesson is to always listen and trust the audience. I believe an audience is as clever, as intelligent as you are. That's the place to start. As a comic you're always listening and reacting to them.

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