What do you think?
Rate this book
Don Juan in Soho: After Molière
The infamous, amoral hedonist in a society entranced by sensation. Moliere's farcical, tragic, anarchic Don Juan (1665) is the inspiration for Patrick Marber's new play in which the action of the original is relocated to present day Soho, London.Whereas Moliere condemned his anti-hero to a literal Hell, Marber condemns him to a hell of his own making.Don Juan in Soho premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in December 2006.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 18, 2007
100 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Marber
38 books44 followersPatrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter. After working for a few years as a stand-up comedian, Marber was a writer and cast member on the radio shows On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You, and their television spinoffs The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. Amongst other roles, Marber portrayed the hapless reporter Peter O'Hanrahahanrahan in both On the Hour and The Day Today.
His first play was Dealer's Choice, which he also directed. Set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker (and partly inspired by his own experiences with gambling addiction), it opened at the National Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy.
After Miss Julie, a version of the Strindberg play Miss Julie, was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of the Labour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed by Michael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at the Donmar Warehouse, London by Kelly Reilly, Richard Coyle and Helen Baxendale. It later had a production at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in 2009.
His play Closer, a comedy of sex, dishonesty and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won the Evening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. A screen adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen.
In Howard Katz, his next play, Marber presented very different subject matter: a middle-aged man struggling with life, death and religion. This was first performed in 2001, again at the National Theatre, but was less favourably received by the critics and has been less of a commercial success than some of his other work. A new production by the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Off-Broadway in March 2007, with Alfred Molina in the title role. A play for young people, The Musicians, about a school orchestra's visit to Russia, was performed for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2004, its first production being at the Sydney Opera House.
Don Juan in Soho, his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedy Don Juan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for Asylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the film Notes on a Scandal (2006), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.
His first play was Dealer's Choice, which he also directed. Set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker (and partly inspired by his own experiences with gambling addiction), it opened at the National Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy.
After Miss Julie, a version of the Strindberg play Miss Julie, was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of the Labour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed by Michael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at the Donmar Warehouse, London by Kelly Reilly, Richard Coyle and Helen Baxendale. It later had a production at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in 2009.
His play Closer, a comedy of sex, dishonesty and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won the Evening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. A screen adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen.
In Howard Katz, his next play, Marber presented very different subject matter: a middle-aged man struggling with life, death and religion. This was first performed in 2001, again at the National Theatre, but was less favourably received by the critics and has been less of a commercial success than some of his other work. A new production by the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Off-Broadway in March 2007, with Alfred Molina in the title role. A play for young people, The Musicians, about a school orchestra's visit to Russia, was performed for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2004, its first production being at the Sydney Opera House.
Don Juan in Soho, his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedy Don Juan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for Asylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the film Notes on a Scandal (2006), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 2, 2019
In this excellent black comedy, Don Juan, reimagined as a sex-addicted English aristocrat, lurches from conquest to conquest followed by his faithful amanuensis Stan. As Stan explains early on, Don isn't nice. He really isn't. He'll fuck anything. He'd fuck the hole in the ozone layer if it were physically possible.
We find out that Stan wasn't exaggerating. Don meets a newly married couple who are en route to their wedding reception on a Thames riverboat, decides the bride is kind of hot, and organises a collision with a motor launch. After a few people are drowned, Don turns up at the hospital. The bride's new husband is in a coma, but Don puts the moves on her while simultaneously being fellated by the amateur hooker whose guy pulled him out of the river. It doesn't end well.
There are people, in particular his heartbroken wife's brothers, who want to kill Don. His father is considering disinheriting him. He's advised that he should mend his ways before it's too late, but he doesn't care. "A good fuck is worth dying for," he explains. "And if you don't believe that, it just shows you've never had a good fuck." A brilliant summation of how twenty-first century Western society works: forget about the long-term, just follow the direction your dick is currently pointing in and somehow your charm and charisma will carry you through. If you want to know what's wrong with the world, Patrick Marber will explain it in words of one fucking syllable.
We find out that Stan wasn't exaggerating. Don meets a newly married couple who are en route to their wedding reception on a Thames riverboat, decides the bride is kind of hot, and organises a collision with a motor launch. After a few people are drowned, Don turns up at the hospital. The bride's new husband is in a coma, but Don puts the moves on her while simultaneously being fellated by the amateur hooker whose guy pulled him out of the river. It doesn't end well.
There are people, in particular his heartbroken wife's brothers, who want to kill Don. His father is considering disinheriting him. He's advised that he should mend his ways before it's too late, but he doesn't care. "A good fuck is worth dying for," he explains. "And if you don't believe that, it just shows you've never had a good fuck." A brilliant summation of how twenty-first century Western society works: forget about the long-term, just follow the direction your dick is currently pointing in and somehow your charm and charisma will carry you through. If you want to know what's wrong with the world, Patrick Marber will explain it in words of one fucking syllable.
June 3, 2019
Unfortunately this was promoted as a sort of xxx sex comedy of the type you go to by mistake at a Fringe festival where you end up in the wrong tent; somehow the fact that the one you walked into was shaped like a giant phallus didn't register. We almost didn't go, which would have been an error. Fortunately I trusted my gut which said Patrick Marber's a solid citizen and Megan Dansie, the director of this particular staging at the University of Adelaide, is very serious about her work. She does a great Shakespeare. Consider this a chaser.
It was well worth going to and is to be recommended. That said, I could imagine it would be easy to do it badly. Anybody else seen it? Thoughts?
It was well worth going to and is to be recommended. That said, I could imagine it would be easy to do it badly. Anybody else seen it? Thoughts?
May 26, 2017
FIRST NOTE: I AM GETTING TO SEE THIS IN LONDON WITH DAVID TENNANT AS DON JUAN.
Okay, now that I got that off of my chest.
This play is fantastic. It is a modern take on Don Juan who is living in Soho, England. He is a pleasure addict that has sex about three times a day with numerous women on average. He lives his life as he pleases and does not care who he hurts along the way. The reader can see how absolutely awful DJ is, but I did feel as though I was rooting for him toward the end. I'm in love with the idea of people not following imaginary social constructs, but I do not like it when others become negatively affected by it. I agree with DJ in that people should be able to live their lives how they please, but I do not think that people have to be causalities in the process. There is a ton of hypocrisy within DJ as a person, and he doesn't see that (which is the hypocrisy in and of itself). Also be prepared for a TON of sex, drugs, immorality, and bad language. Highly recommend it. Cannot wait to see it live.
Okay, now that I got that off of my chest.
This play is fantastic. It is a modern take on Don Juan who is living in Soho, England. He is a pleasure addict that has sex about three times a day with numerous women on average. He lives his life as he pleases and does not care who he hurts along the way. The reader can see how absolutely awful DJ is, but I did feel as though I was rooting for him toward the end. I'm in love with the idea of people not following imaginary social constructs, but I do not like it when others become negatively affected by it. I agree with DJ in that people should be able to live their lives how they please, but I do not think that people have to be causalities in the process. There is a ton of hypocrisy within DJ as a person, and he doesn't see that (which is the hypocrisy in and of itself). Also be prepared for a TON of sex, drugs, immorality, and bad language. Highly recommend it. Cannot wait to see it live.
January 13, 2025
Strange text to bring in the new year. Probably fun live but a bit shallow. Tonally quite righteous but none of the lives or implied philosophies re: how-to-live are convincing. Perhaps that’s the point. Makes for a very nihilistic and unromantic tale wrapped in comedic gloss
March 8, 2017
2.5
I want to give this the benefit of the doubt, like I do with so many plays, that if I saw it with gifted actors, maybe it would leap off the page and transform into a magnum opus. That it would touch me...or entertain me...or something. As it was, I am left feeling I missed the point.
The story itself is simple, we follow a man around who lives only for pleasure. Mostly this is lots and lots of sex. We watch an addict go through his day--DJ gets visibly twitchy when it's been too long without, and the minute one assignation is done, he's looking for the next. He doesn't feel anything for the women (and occasional man, we are told) he sleeps with, he smashes up their lives and walks away. His only companion is his much-abused valet, caught between fascination and loathing. The relationship so reminded me of Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf, between the wolf and his long time manservant. It was the same symbiotic/parasitic bond where contempt of the one meets condemnation tempered with admiration by the other.
Don Juan in Soho may be one of those works that is more fun to discuss than read. There are certainly parts I would like to kick around with a fellow reader or audience member. First, the significance of the main character not having a name. Oh, in the script he's listed as DJ (Don Juan, I'm a little embarrassed to admit I read the whole play before I realized that), but I always thought that more of a title. Our "hero" never introduces himself, and the people who know him carefully don't apply a name. Even in the acknowledgement by the author it thanked the actor for "agreeing to play the leading role" instead of listing the part. It almost gets awkward at times; pronouns have to work pretty hard. He is just a nameless ball of need with the money to indulge it. Still, I wanted to warm to him despite being warned, and shown! that I shouldn't. I found myself wondering what happened to DJ to make him like that. Arguably, something must have. His father describes an incident when he was seven that is not normal. What horrific piece of his childhood are we missing?
And would my experience of the play be different if we knew? Or would it be too easy then?
I want to give this the benefit of the doubt, like I do with so many plays, that if I saw it with gifted actors, maybe it would leap off the page and transform into a magnum opus. That it would touch me...or entertain me...or something. As it was, I am left feeling I missed the point.
The story itself is simple, we follow a man around who lives only for pleasure. Mostly this is lots and lots of sex. We watch an addict go through his day--DJ gets visibly twitchy when it's been too long without, and the minute one assignation is done, he's looking for the next. He doesn't feel anything for the women (and occasional man, we are told) he sleeps with, he smashes up their lives and walks away. His only companion is his much-abused valet, caught between fascination and loathing. The relationship so reminded me of Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf, between the wolf and his long time manservant. It was the same symbiotic/parasitic bond where contempt of the one meets condemnation tempered with admiration by the other.
Don Juan in Soho may be one of those works that is more fun to discuss than read. There are certainly parts I would like to kick around with a fellow reader or audience member. First, the significance of the main character not having a name. Oh, in the script he's listed as DJ (Don Juan, I'm a little embarrassed to admit I read the whole play before I realized that), but I always thought that more of a title. Our "hero" never introduces himself, and the people who know him carefully don't apply a name. Even in the acknowledgement by the author it thanked the actor for "agreeing to play the leading role" instead of listing the part. It almost gets awkward at times; pronouns have to work pretty hard. He is just a nameless ball of need with the money to indulge it. Still, I wanted to warm to him despite being warned, and shown! that I shouldn't. I found myself wondering what happened to DJ to make him like that. Arguably, something must have. His father describes an incident when he was seven that is not normal. What horrific piece of his childhood are we missing?
And would my experience of the play be different if we knew? Or would it be too easy then?
May 14, 2017
Although it might have been a brilliant idea to update Moliere's farce to modern day, the result is rather lackluster. Mainly, even though the references and language get updated, it still FEELS like a play from 1663... and I think you could do it in period dress and no one would really know the difference. There ARE some clever touches (including a nice swipe at 45), and I wouldn't mind seeing David Tennant in the current revival - but all in all, much ado about little.
January 7, 2018
Very strong to my play reading year. Haven't read any Marber before, or any Moliere for that case, but it reads like something that lives in its own theatrical world. I love reading plays that have their own literary and theatrical life before they even hit the stage.
November 2, 2023
Read to learn from a play how dialogue is said without many adverbs, as recommended here (https://brevity.wordpress.com/2021/06...). Hilarious and touching. BONUS! Found out DAVID TENNANT played Don Juan on stage 6 years ago!!
December 28, 2019
Amena y divertida. Si se disfruta como lectura debe ser soberbia en escena.
July 19, 2022
I'm honestly struggling to understand the good reviews this play has received.
October 10, 2023
I've almost got the whole play memorised. It's great.
September 25, 2024
What a fucking ride!
December 24, 2024
Banger play
December 20, 2016
A great satire full of filth-ridden hedonism and comedy. Ten years after it was first staged in London, the themes of the play still remain relevant and thought-provoking to today's audiences. Overall a great play which holds a large scope for thematic and contextual analysis.
April 27, 2012
The book started solidly. I honestly thought that it was a good modern interpretation of the classic character. However, as the play went on, the story just seemed to grow sloppy and repetitive. DJ's crude antics are quite funny at first, but after a while you can just predict whatever's going to happen.
The ending was a particularly disappointing section because it just all seemed so rushed.
Finally, the play doesn't read like a play very much at all, it reads more like a television show. Which is perfectly fine, I think it would have been a lot better as a television show. But as a play, it very easy for the cracks to show.
The ending was a particularly disappointing section because it just all seemed so rushed.
Finally, the play doesn't read like a play very much at all, it reads more like a television show. Which is perfectly fine, I think it would have been a lot better as a television show. But as a play, it very easy for the cracks to show.
January 3, 2009
3.5 stars
I generally like this version of Don Juan, and I particularly like the treatment of the first two acts. My only complaint is the treatment of the statue. I love that in act three the statue comes to life only after the characters have gotten high; this keeps the idea of fate and the fantastical level of the story alive while keeping it in the current day world of the play Marber has created. However, I'm not sure if it works as well when it returns. It ends up feeling like a left-over from the original and doesn't organically belong in this new play.
But as I said, it's a very nice adaptation.
I generally like this version of Don Juan, and I particularly like the treatment of the first two acts. My only complaint is the treatment of the statue. I love that in act three the statue comes to life only after the characters have gotten high; this keeps the idea of fate and the fantastical level of the story alive while keeping it in the current day world of the play Marber has created. However, I'm not sure if it works as well when it returns. It ends up feeling like a left-over from the original and doesn't organically belong in this new play.
But as I said, it's a very nice adaptation.
April 30, 2017
DJ "We live in an age of apology, don't confuse it with authenticity. At least my lies are honest - at least I know when I'm lying and why. Would you prefer me to be a hypocrite? It's easily done and terribly vogue - ..."
I saw this play at the Wyndham's Theatre, London, and it was great! David Tennant managed to turn DJ into a most likeable character.
Stan "I take your point, but you're not human."
DJ "On the contrary, I am 'uberly' human... "
I saw this play at the Wyndham's Theatre, London, and it was great! David Tennant managed to turn DJ into a most likeable character.
Stan "I take your point, but you're not human."
DJ "On the contrary, I am 'uberly' human... "
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews