Playwright, novelist, and translator, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and first established his reputation with witty, gently satirical columns in The Manchester Guardian and The Observer, and a series of novels in the same vein, including The Russian Interpreter (1966). He wrote many plays, notably three successful comedies of the 1970s: Alphabetical Order (1975), Donkey's Years (1976), and Clouds (1976). His greatest commercial success was Noises Off (1982, filmed 1992). Benefactors (1984) received the Lawrence Olivier Award for Play of the Year. Later work includes the script for the film Clockwise (1986), the novels The Trick of It (1989), Headlong (1999), which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and Spies (Whitbread, 2002), and the plays Look, Look (1990) and Now You Know (1995). Copenhagen (1998), a play about atomic scientists, won the Olivier Award (1998), the Evening Standard Award (1998), and the 2000 Tony Award for best play. Later plays include Democracy (2003, Evening Standard Award). The philosophical The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe, appeared in 2006. He has also translated and adapted work by Chekov and Tolstoy for the National Theatre.
Michael Frayn|
Michael Frayn, featured on the cover of a collection of his newspaper articles |
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| Born: |
8 September 1933 London, United Kingdom |
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| Occupation(s): | Reporter, columnist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter |
| Nationality: | England |
| Writing period: | 1962 - |
| Genre(s): | Farce, Historical fiction |
Michael Frayn (born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist.
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 Noises Off, Donkeys Years and Balmoral (aka Liberty Hall).
He is now considered to be Britain's finest translator of Anton Chekhov - adapting the four major plays (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 Platanov 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).
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