Wednesday, March 10, 2010

My hero / Patrick Marber by Craig Raine

 

Patrick Marber.
Photograph: Jane Bown


MY HERO

Patrick Marber by Craig Raine


Craig Raine
Saturday 10 March 2010


S

toppard, Kundera: all my heroes are terrific writers. Hegel said that no man is a hero to his valet – meaning intimacy is incompatible with the heroic. Yet I know the middle name of my chosen hero: Patrick Albert Marber. In 1996, I spent prolonged periods on Patrick's lumpy sofabed when he was directing my verse play 1953 at the Almeida. One afternoon, as he was vanishing with Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse under his arm, he mused: "Just think, you're the only person in the universe who knows that I'm taking a shit. Apart from me." At the time I had a trapped nerve in my left arm and permanent toothache requiring constant Nurofen. When I laughed, it was extra painful. Patrick made it his business to torture me with jokes and send-ups of the cast.

It began with a phone call, out of the blue. "Thing is, I've got a hit [Dealer's Choice] at the National, so for five minutes I can do what I want – and I want to direct your play." Confident. Shrewd. Opportunistic. Empirical. Unbothered when I told him the Almeida had already turned my play down. Modest, he knew he was hot. "But it will need some re-writes." My play was an updated version of Racine. Patrick wanted it to be funnier and more violent – more like Tarantino. Rewriting was surprisingly pleasurable; we goaded each other on. "This bit here," Patrick said, "when he says, 'Weren't those two lovers?' What about a joke?" The line became: "Wasn't he showing her the rhubarb a bit back?" It cracked up the cast at the first read-through. On stage, though, it got a laugh twice.

Patrick always knows what he is talking about. Racine is radio drama: all talk and no strides. He had the designer Vicky Mortimer build a billiard table that rose from the floor, so the actors had something to do while they threaded their way through some very long speeches. It was a great idea, but it was over-budget: Patrick used his director's fee to pay for it. You see? Heroic. And he is a wonderful writer, too.

THE GUARDIAN




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016


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