Word: marber
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...forefront of the movement are McDonagh, 26; Patrick Marber, 32, whose play Closer is running at the National's small Cottesloe Theatre; and Mark Ravenhill, 31, whose controversial play Shopping and F______ is finishing a month-long run at the West End's Gielgud Theatre before heading to Edinburgh; it will be seen in New York City early next year. An earlier trilogy of McDonagh's opened this past weekend at the Duke of York's, which makes him the only writer this season, apart from Shakespeare, to have four plays running concurrently in London...
Though in common they have youth, a propensity for bleak subject matter and an ability to write beautifully about it, the three playwrights are very different. Marber, a Londoner who got his start on the comedy circuit performing stand-up and working with the popular television comedian Steve Coogan, crafts intricately layered, well-observed, heartfelt plays in a realistic vein about contemporary relationships. McDonagh is more a folkwriter in the tradition of J.M. Synge. His macabre, wildly funny and over-the-top tragicomedies are slightly absurdist, set in remote parts of rural Ireland and peopled with comic grotesques--or literal...
...Marber and McDonagh resist the suggestion that they are part of a literary movement: "That makes it sound as though we all know each other and sit around in cafes all day chatting," says Marber. In fact they barely know one another. What really seems to bind these playwrights together, from the perspective of an outsider, is the absence from their work of any overt political agenda. These are not issue or idea plays (like, say, David Hare's Plenty or Caryl Churchill's Top Girls), though they speak seriously to a contemporary audience and reflect the world their authors...