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Michael Frayn

January 08, 2023

Michael Frayn, FRSL (/freɪn/; born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off[8] and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. He has also written philosophical works, such as The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe (2006).

Michael Frayn

FRSL
Born (1933-09-08) 8 September 1933 (age 89)
Mill Hill, Middlesex, England
Occupation
  • Reporter
  • columnist
  • novelist
  • playwright
  • screenwriter
NationalityBritish
Period1962–present
GenreFarce, historical fiction, philosophy
SpouseGillian Palmer[1][2]
Claire Tomalin (1993–)[3][4]
Children3 daughters including
Rebecca Frayn[5]
RelativesFinn Harries[6]
Jack Harries[7]

Early life

Frayn was born at Mill Hill (then in Middlesex) to Thomas Allen Frayn, an asbestos salesman from a working-class family of blacksmiths, locksmiths and servants, in which deafness was hereditary, and his wife Violet Alice (née Lawson). Violet was the daughter of a failed palliasse merchant; having studied as a violinist at the Royal Academy of Music, she worked as a shop assistant and occasional clothes model at Harrods. After the slump in asbestos prices, Frayn's sister supported the family by also working at Harrods, as a children's hairdresser.[9][10] He grew up in Ewell, Surrey, and was educated at Kingston Grammar School. Following two years of National Service, during which he learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists, Frayn read Moral Sciences (Philosophy) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating in 1957. He then worked as a reporter and columnist for The Guardian and The Observer, where he established a reputation as a satirist and comic writer, and began publishing his plays and novels.

Works

The play Copenhagen deals with a historical event, a 1941 meeting between the Danish physicist Niels Bohr and his protégé, the German Werner Heisenberg, when Denmark is under German occupation, and Heisenberg is—maybe?—working on the development of an atomic bomb. Frayn was attracted to the topic because it seemed to 'encapsulate something about the difficulty of knowing why people do what they do and there is a parallel between that and the impossibility that Heisenberg established in physics, about ever knowing everything about the behaviour of physical objects'.[11] The play explores various possibilities.

Frayn's more recent play Democracy ran successfully in London (the National Theatre, 2003-4 and West End transfer), Copenhagen and on Broadway (Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 2004-5); it dramatised the story of the German chancellor Willy Brandt and his personal assistant, the East German spy Günter Guillaume. Five years later, again at the National Theatre, it was followed by Afterlife, a biographical drama of the life of the great Austrian impresario Max Reinhardt, director of the Salzburg Festival, which opened at the Lyttelton Theatre in June 2008, starring Roger Allam as Reinhardt.[12]

His other original plays include two evenings of short plays, The Two of Us and Alarms and Excursions, the philosophical comedies Alphabetical Order, Benefactors, Clouds, Make and Break and Here, and the farces Donkeys' Years, Balmoral (also known as Liberty Hall), and Noises Off, which critic Frank Rich in his book The Hot Seat claimed "is, was, and probably always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime."

His novels include Headlong (shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize), The Tin Men (won the 1966 Somerset Maugham Award), The Russian Interpreter (1967, Hawthornden Prize) Towards the End of the Morning, Sweet Dreams, A Landing on the Sun, A Very Private Life, Now You Know and Skios (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2012). His novel Spies was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction in 2002. He has also written a book about philosophy, Constructions, and a book of his own philosophy, The Human Touch.

His columns for The Guardian and The Observer (collected in The Day of the Dog, The Book of Fub and On the Outskirts) are models of the comic essay; in the 1980s a number of them were adapted and performed for BBC Radio 4 by Martin Jarvis.

Frayn has also written screenplays for the films Clockwise, starring John Cleese, First and Last starring Tom Wilkinson, Birthday, Jamie on a Flying Visit, and the TV series Making Faces, starring Eleanor Bron.[13]

Frayn is now considered to be Britain's finest translator of Anton Chekhov[14] (The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard) as well as an early untitled work, which he titled Wild Honey (other translations of the work have called it Platonov or Don Juan in the Russian Manner) and a number of Chekhov's smaller plays for an evening called The Sneeze (originally performed on the West End by Rowan Atkinson).

Frayn also translated Yuri Trifonov's play Exchange, Leo Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment, and Jean Anouilh's Number One.

In 1980, he presented the Australian journey of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys of the World. His journey took him from Sydney to Perth on the Indian Pacific, with side visits to the Lithgow Zig Zag and a journey on The Ghan's old route from Marree to Alice Springs shortly before the opening of the new line from Tarcoola to Alice Springs.

Frayn's wife, Claire Tomalin, is a biographer and literary journalist.[2] They and their daughter Rebecca, an actress and filmmaker, live in Chiswick.[15]

Awards

He is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society,[20] and declined a CBE and a Knighthood in 1989 and 2003 respectively.[21]

Bibliography

Novels

Plays

Newly-written

  • The Two of Us, four one-act plays for two actors (1970) Black and Silver, Mr. Foot, Chinamen, and The new Quixote
  • Alphabetical Order (1976)
  • Donkeys' Years (1977)
  • Clouds (1977)
  • Balmoral (1978; revised 1980 as Liberty Hall, revised 1987)
  • Make and Break (1980)
  • Noises Off (1982)
  • Benefactors (1984)
  • The Sneeze (1988), based on short stories and plays of Chekhov
  • First and Last (1989)
  • Listen to This: Sketches and Monologues (1990)
  • Jamie on a Flying Visit; and Birthday (1990)
  • Look Look (1990)
  • Audience (1991)
  • Here (1993)
  • La Belle Vivette, a version of Jacques Offenbach's La Belle Hélène (1995)
  • Alarms and Excursions: More Plays than One (1998)
  • Copenhagen (1998)
  • Democracy (2003)
  • Afterlife (2008)
  • Matchbox Theatre: Thirty Short Entertainments (2014), ISBN 9780571313938

Translated

Anthologies

  • Plays: One (1985), ISBN 978-0413592804 – contains: Alphabetical Order; Donkey's Years; Clouds; Make and Break; Noises Off
  • Plays: Two (1991), ISBN 978-0413660800 – contains: Balmoral; Benefactors; Wild Honey
  • Plays: Three (2000), ISBN 978-0413752307 – contains: Here; Now You Know; La Belle Vivette
  • Plays: Four (2010), ISBN 9781408128626 – contains: Copenhagen; Democracy; Afterlife

Short fiction

  • Speak After The Beep: Studies in the Art of Communicating With Inanimate and Semi-Animate Objects (1995).

Non-fiction

  • The Day of the Dog, articles reprinted from The Guardian (1962).
  • The Book of Fub, articles reprinted from The Guardian (1963).
  • On the Outskirts, articles reprinted from The Observer (1964).
  • At Bay in Gear Street, articles reprinted from The Observer (1967).
  • The Original Michael Frayn, a collection of the above four, plus 19 new Observer pieces.
  • Constructions, a volume of philosophy (1974).
  • Celia's Secret: An Investigation (US title The Copenhagen Papers ), with David Burke (2000).
  • The Human Touch: Our part in the creation of the universe (2006).
  • Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre, 1970–2008 (2008), his path into theatre and a collection of the introductions to his plays.
  • Travels with a Typewriter (2009), a collection of Frayn's travel pieces from the 1960s and '70s from The Guardian and the Observer.
  • My Father's Fortune: A Life (2010), a memoir of Frayn's childhood.

Notes

  1. ^ Gyles Brandreth (27 June 2002). "A closed book opens". The Telegraph. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  2. ^ a b Hanks, Robert (17 November 2002). "Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin: A marriage between the sheets". The Independent. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  3. ^ "The ultimate twinset: Jack and Finn Harries!". Tatler. 5 March 2013.
  4. ^ Rainey, Sarah (14 September 2012). "YouTube videos funded our gap year travels". The Telegraph. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  5. ^ Andrew Billen (23 April 2009). "Michael Frayn on his very current Alphabetical Order". The Times. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  6. ^ Miller, Michael W. (6 January 2016). "Michael Frayn's 'Noises Off' Returns to Broadway". The Wall Street Journal.
  7. ^ John Walsh @johnhenrywalsh (24 March 2013). "Michael Frayn: Farce and the uncertainty principle". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  8. ^ "Michael Frayn British author and translator", Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
  9. ^ My Father's Fortune, A Life by Michael Frayn, Faber and Faber, 2010, pp. 12–14, 28–29, 225.
  10. ^ 2009 Interview in The Observer.
  11. ^ "Interview with Michael Frayn". British Library (sound recording).
  12. ^ Fiona Maddocks, "The History Play Man; Daring: Frayn's Drama Slips in and out of Rhyming Couplets 'To Blur the Distinction between Theatre and Life Just as Rheinhardt Did'", The Evening Standard, 3 June 2008.
  13. ^ "Michael Frayn". IMDb.
  14. ^ Donald Rayfield, "Review: Chekhov: Four Plays and Three Jokes by Sharon Marie - adapting the four major plays", Translation and Literature Vol. 20, No. 3, Translating Russia, 1890–1935 (Autumn 2011), pp. 408–410?
  15. ^ "Rebecca Frayn's Deceptions". Chiswick W4.com. 10 June 2016. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
  16. ^ "Michael Frayn and Howard Jacobson up for Wodehouse prize". BBC. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  17. ^ . English PEN. Archived from the original on 21 November 2012. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  18. ^ "Honorary Graduates of the University of Birmingham since 2000" (PDF). Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  19. ^ . www.slu.edu. Archived from the original on 23 August 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
  20. ^ "National Secular Society Honorary Associates". National Secular Society. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
  21. ^ "Some who turned the offer down". The Guardian. 22 December 2003.
  22. ^ John Banville. 1992. "Playing House. Rev. of A Landing on the Sun by Michael Frayn and Daughters of Albion by A. N. Wilson. The New York Review of Books. 14 May 1992.
  23. ^ New Statesman and Society. IV, 13 September 1991, p. 39.

References

External links

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Michael Frayn.

January 08, 2023
michael, frayn, this, article, includes, list, general, references, lacks, sufficient, corresponding, inline, citations, please, help, improve, this, article, introducing, more, precise, citations, october, 2012, learn, when, remove, this, template, message, f. This article includes a list of general references but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations October 2012 Learn how and when to remove this template message Michael Frayn FRSL f r eɪ n born 8 September 1933 is an English playwright and novelist He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off 8 and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy His novels such as Towards the End of the Morning Headlong and Spies have also been critical and commercial successes making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction He has also written philosophical works such as The Human Touch Our Part in the Creation of the Universe 2006 Michael FraynFRSLBorn 1933 09 08 8 September 1933 age 89 Mill Hill Middlesex EnglandOccupationReportercolumnistnovelistplaywrightscreenwriterNationalityBritishPeriod1962 presentGenreFarce historical fiction philosophySpouseGillian Palmer 1 2 Claire Tomalin 1993 3 4 Children3 daughters includingRebecca Frayn 5 RelativesFinn Harries 6 Jack Harries 7 Contents 1 Early life 2 Works 3 Awards 4 Bibliography 4 1 Novels 4 2 Plays 4 2 1 Newly written 4 2 2 Translated 4 2 3 Anthologies 4 3 Short fiction 4 4 Non fiction 5 Notes 6 References 7 External linksEarly life EditFrayn was born at Mill Hill then in Middlesex to Thomas Allen Frayn an asbestos salesman from a working class family of blacksmiths locksmiths and servants in which deafness was hereditary and his wife Violet Alice nee Lawson Violet was the daughter of a failed palliasse merchant having studied as a violinist at the Royal Academy of Music she worked as a shop assistant and occasional clothes model at Harrods After the slump in asbestos prices Frayn s sister supported the family by also working at Harrods as a children s hairdresser 9 10 He grew up in Ewell Surrey and was educated at Kingston Grammar School Following two years of National Service during which he learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists Frayn read Moral Sciences Philosophy at Emmanuel College Cambridge graduating in 1957 He then worked as a reporter and columnist for The Guardian and The Observer where he established a reputation as a satirist and comic writer and began publishing his plays and novels Works EditThe play Copenhagen deals with a historical event a 1941 meeting between the Danish physicist Niels Bohr and his protege the German Werner Heisenberg when Denmark is under German occupation and Heisenberg is maybe working on the development of an atomic bomb Frayn was attracted to the topic because it seemed to encapsulate something about the difficulty of knowing why people do what they do and there is a parallel between that and the impossibility that Heisenberg established in physics about ever knowing everything about the behaviour of physical objects 11 The play explores various possibilities Frayn s more recent play Democracy ran successfully in London the National Theatre 2003 4 and West End transfer Copenhagen and on Broadway Brooks Atkinson Theatre 2004 5 it dramatised the story of the German chancellor Willy Brandt and his personal assistant the East German spy Gunter Guillaume Five years later again at the National Theatre it was followed by Afterlife a biographical drama of the life of the great Austrian impresario Max Reinhardt director of the Salzburg Festival which opened at the Lyttelton Theatre in June 2008 starring Roger Allam as Reinhardt 12 His other original plays include two evenings of short plays The Two of Us and Alarms and Excursions the philosophical comedies Alphabetical Order Benefactors Clouds Make and Break and Here and the farces Donkeys Years Balmoral also known as Liberty Hall and Noises Off which critic Frank Rich in his book The Hot Seat claimed is was and probably always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime His novels include Headlong shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize The Tin Men won the 1966 Somerset Maugham Award The Russian Interpreter 1967 Hawthornden Prize Towards the End of the Morning Sweet Dreams A Landing on the Sun A Very Private Life Now You Know and Skios long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2012 His novel Spies was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction in 2002 He has also written a book about philosophy Constructions and a book of his own philosophy The Human Touch His columns for The Guardian and The Observer collected in The Day of the Dog The Book of Fub and On the Outskirts are models of the comic essay in the 1980s a number of them were adapted and performed for BBC Radio 4 by Martin Jarvis Frayn has also written screenplays for the films Clockwise starring John Cleese First and Last starring Tom Wilkinson Birthday Jamie on a Flying Visit and the TV series Making Faces starring Eleanor Bron 13 Frayn is now considered to be Britain s finest translator of Anton Chekhov 14 The Seagull Uncle Vanya Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard as well as an early untitled work which he titled Wild Honey other translations of the work have called it Platonov or Don Juan in the Russian Manner and a number of Chekhov s smaller plays for an evening called The Sneeze originally performed on the West End by Rowan Atkinson Frayn also translated Yuri Trifonov s play Exchange Leo Tolstoy s The Fruits of Enlightenment and Jean Anouilh s Number One In 1980 he presented the Australian journey of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys of the World His journey took him from Sydney to Perth on the Indian Pacific with side visits to the Lithgow Zig Zag and a journey on The Ghan s old route from Marree to Alice Springs shortly before the opening of the new line from Tarcoola to Alice Springs Frayn s wife Claire Tomalin is a biographer and literary journalist 2 They and their daughter Rebecca an actress and filmmaker live in Chiswick 15 Awards EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed November 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message 1966 Somerset Maugham Award for The Tin Men 1975 London Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy for Alphabetical Order 1976 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy for Donkeys Years 1980 London Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy for Make and Break 1982 London Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy for Noises Off 1982 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy for Noises Off 1984 London Evening Standard Award for Best Play for Benefactors 1986 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play of the 1985 86 Season for Benefactors 1990 International Emmy Award for First and Last 1991 Sunday Express Book of the Year for A Landing on the Sun 1998 Critics Circle Theatre Awards for Best New Play for Copenhagen 1998 London Evening Standard Award for Best Play for Copenhagen 2000 Tony Award for Best Play USA for Copenhagen 2000 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play of the 1999 2000 Season for Copenhagen 2002 Whitbread Best Novel Award for Spies the overall Whitbread Prize went to his wife Claire Tomalin 2002 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Spies 16 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book Eurasia Region for Spies 2003 London Evening Standard Award for Best Play for Democracy 2003 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime s Distinguished Service to Literature 17 2005 Honorary DLitt from the University of Birmingham 18 2006 St Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates 19 He is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society 20 and declined a CBE and a Knighthood in 1989 and 2003 respectively 21 Bibliography EditNovels Edit The Tin Men 1965 The Russian Interpreter 1966 Towards the End of the Morning US title Against Entropy 1967 A Very Private Life 1968 Sweet Dreams 1973 The Trick of It 1989 A Landing on the Sun 1991 22 23 Now You Know 1993 Headlong 1999 Spies 2002 Skios 2012 Plays Edit Newly written Edit The Two of Us four one act plays for two actors 1970 Black and Silver Mr Foot Chinamen and The new Quixote Alphabetical Order 1976 Donkeys Years 1977 Clouds 1977 Balmoral 1978 revised 1980 as Liberty Hall revised 1987 Make and Break 1980 Noises Off 1982 Benefactors 1984 The Sneeze 1988 based on short stories and plays of Chekhov First and Last 1989 Listen to This Sketches and Monologues 1990 Jamie on a Flying Visit and Birthday 1990 Look Look 1990 Audience 1991 Here 1993 La Belle Vivette a version of Jacques Offenbach s La Belle Helene 1995 Alarms and Excursions More Plays than One 1998 Copenhagen 1998 Democracy 2003 1 2 Afterlife 2008 3 Matchbox Theatre Thirty Short Entertainments 2014 ISBN 9780571313938Translated Edit The Cherry Orchard from Chekhov 1978 The Fruits of Enlightenment from Tolstoy 1979 Three Sisters from Chekhov 1983 revised 1988 Number One from Jean Anouilh s Le Nombril 1984 Wild Honey from Chekhov 1984 The Seagull from Chekhov 1986 Uncle Vanya from Chekhov 1986 Exchange adapted from Yuri Trifonov 1990 Anthologies Edit Plays One 1985 ISBN 978 0413592804 contains Alphabetical Order Donkey s Years Clouds Make and Break Noises Off Plays Two 1991 ISBN 978 0413660800 contains Balmoral Benefactors Wild Honey Plays Three 2000 ISBN 978 0413752307 contains Here Now You Know La Belle Vivette Plays Four 2010 ISBN 9781408128626 contains Copenhagen Democracy AfterlifeShort fiction Edit Speak After The Beep Studies in the Art of Communicating With Inanimate and Semi Animate Objects 1995 Non fiction Edit The Day of the Dog articles reprinted from The Guardian 1962 The Book of Fub articles reprinted from The Guardian 1963 On the Outskirts articles reprinted from The Observer 1964 At Bay in Gear Street articles reprinted from The Observer 1967 The Original Michael Frayn a collection of the above four plus 19 new Observer pieces Constructions a volume of philosophy 1974 Celia s Secret An Investigation US title The Copenhagen Papers with David Burke 2000 The Human Touch Our part in the creation of the universe 2006 Stage Directions Writing on Theatre 1970 2008 2008 his path into theatre and a collection of the introductions to his plays Travels with a Typewriter 2009 a collection of Frayn s travel pieces from the 1960s and 70s from The Guardian and the Observer My Father s Fortune A Life 2010 a memoir of Frayn s childhood Notes Edit Gyles Brandreth 27 June 2002 A closed book opens The Telegraph Retrieved 29 October 2018 a b Hanks Robert 17 November 2002 Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin A marriage between the sheets The Independent Retrieved 29 October 2018 The ultimate twinset Jack and Finn Harries Tatler 5 March 2013 Rainey Sarah 14 September 2012 YouTube videos funded our gap year travels The Telegraph Retrieved 29 October 2018 Andrew Billen 23 April 2009 Michael Frayn on his very current Alphabetical Order The Times Retrieved 29 October 2018 Miller Michael W 6 January 2016 Michael Frayn s Noises Off Returns to Broadway The Wall Street Journal John Walsh johnhenrywalsh 24 March 2013 Michael Frayn Farce and the uncertainty principle The Independent Archived from the original on 12 May 2022 Retrieved 29 October 2018 Michael Frayn British author and translator Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 6 August 2017 My Father s Fortune A Life by Michael Frayn Faber and Faber 2010 pp 12 14 28 29 225 2009 Interview in The Observer Interview with Michael Frayn British Library sound recording Fiona Maddocks The History Play Man Daring Frayn s Drama Slips in and out of Rhyming Couplets To Blur the Distinction between Theatre and Life Just as Rheinhardt Did The Evening Standard 3 June 2008 Michael Frayn IMDb Donald Rayfield Review Chekhov Four Plays and Three Jokes by Sharon Marie adapting the four major plays Translation and Literature Vol 20 No 3 Translating Russia 1890 1935 Autumn 2011 pp 408 410 Rebecca Frayn s Deceptions Chiswick W4 com 10 June 2016 Retrieved 12 June 2016 Michael Frayn and Howard Jacobson up for Wodehouse prize BBC Retrieved 15 November 2022 Golden Pen Award official website English PEN Archived from the original on 21 November 2012 Retrieved 3 December 2012 Honorary Graduates of the University of Birmingham since 2000 PDF Retrieved 16 July 2015 Saint Louis Literary Award Saint Louis University www slu edu Archived from the original on 23 August 2016 Retrieved 25 July 2016 National Secular Society Honorary Associates National Secular Society Retrieved 26 August 2019 Some who turned the offer down The Guardian 22 December 2003 John Banville 1992 Playing House Rev of A Landing on the Sun by Michael Frayn and Daughters of Albion by A N Wilson The New York Review of Books 14 May 1992 New Statesman and Society IV 13 September 1991 p 39 References EditTheatre Record and its annual IndexesExternal links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Michael Frayn Michael Frayn at British Council Literature Michael Frayn at the British Film Institute Shusha Guppy Winter 2003 Michael Frayn The Art of Theater No 15 The Paris Review Winter 2003 168 Profile on BBC Four archived 2007 10 21 Michael Frayn at the Internet Broadway Database Michael Frayn at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Profile at United Agents On Doollee Michael Frayn at IMDb Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Michael Frayn amp oldid 1122011320, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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