Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran: Writing for the Stage and Screen - Oxford Playhouse, Sept 17 2010

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran have had a prolific television writing career for the past 25 years, their work including Shine on Harvey Moon, Birds of a Feather, and Goodnight Sweetheart.  But they are not here as television writers, but rather as Olivier nominated playwrights, and the talk takes place on the set of their newest play, written especially for the Oxford Playhouse, Von Ribbentrop’s Watch.


The play is inspired by a true story: Laurence Marks (who is Jewish) bought a watch for $200 and years later discovered that it originally belonged to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister who was hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.  It turned out that the watch was worth about £50,000.  Whether it would be morally right for him to make a profit from Nazi memorabilia developed over three years from argument with his friend and writing partner Maurice Gran, to art.

Aside from very engagingly selling their play (Saturday was unfortunately its last night in Oxford before it goes on tour), they also talk about their theatre career in general.  They say that chance encounters have played a huge role in their success, but how many of us can say that we just happened to sit next to Alan Ayckbourn at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival?  Their television career made these chance encounters, with the right people, possible.

On being a writer, Marks says that everyone in the room will have had a wonderful idea, but only one person will know that they have had it.   Von Ribbentrop’s Watch raises the question, what would you do if you discovered you owned some Nazi memorabilia?  Sell it?  Give the money to charity?  Donate it to a museum?  Or write a play about it?

PS. Goodnight Sweetheart: The Musical is coming.  You have been warned.