Patrick Marber: 'We need more European theatre'

Playwright and director Patrick Marber said the lack of contemporary European plays in London theatre is “a real loss in the culture”.

Marber, who directed the critically acclaimed Leopoldstadt in the West End and has written for the National Theatre, said he agreed “immediately” when he was asked to direct Nachtland at the Young Vic.

The play, translated from its original German, is about a family forced to confront the country’s history and their own beliefs when they inherit a painting by Adolf Hitler.

Marber said: “If I was running a theatre, which I won’t ever be, I would do European plays because I think we don’t have a theatre that does.

“The Almeida used to do new European plays and old European plays but we don’t have a theatre in London now that makes it their job to find the best of new European writing and I think it’s a real loss in the culture.”

Marber said the play didn’t “have anything to do with Leopoldstadt” which was set in Vienna’s Jewish quarter during the rise of the Nazis.

He said: “I suspect it was offered to me because I’d been in that world for four years and to do another play that dealt with antisemitism, Nazism, the right, Germany, I suspect I was well qualified from a knowledge base.

He said the play’s themes were “more relevant” now but that it was “about so many different things”.

He said: “It’s about so many different things this play, it’s about marriage and love and family and losing a parent as well as all the other things.

“I guess that’s one of the reasons I love the play so much, it’s so compact and so full of things that it was about as well as what it’s obviously about and I love a play like that that expands outwards in meaning as you watch it and you recognise it’s a really brilliant piece of writing because it’s not about one thing it’s about many things simultaneously.”

:: Nachtland is at the Young Vic Theatre until 20 April 2024. www.youngvic.org