Frank Marcus

Frank Marcus was born in Breslau, Germany in 1928, and emigrated to England in 1939. After being educated in England, he worked as a secretary, salesman and antique shop manager before joining London’s Unity Theatre as an actor, director and scenic designer. His first play, MINUET FOR STUFFED BIRDS, was written and performed in 1950, and THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE was his fourth play. It won him the Variety, Evening Standard and Plays and Players Awards, and critics lavished praise on it.

Frank Marcus wrote a total of 16 plays, including two mime scenarios. He is also the author of five television plays and six translations of plays by authors including Arthur Schnitzler and Ferenc Molnar.

He was theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph for 10 years from 1968, and contributed regularly to magazines in Britain and America.

He has written “All my plays are about illusion and reality: about the impossibility of living either with or without illusions. The only honest conclusion to comedy is the sense of life going on. What more dare one suggest? ...in the sense in which I write my plays, comedy is the very last alternative to despair. Sad and funny at the same time. Is that deliberate? No, it’s natural. That’s how I see people and events”.

He died in 1996.