The Playwrights Database
MARK MCCRUM
(1958 - )Nationality: British
email: Click here to contact Website: Click here
Literary Agent: LAW Writers' and Artists' Agents
Mark McCrum was born in Cambridge, educated at schools in the Home Counties, then read English at Cambridge University. Since then he has pursued a career as a writer and artist. Some time after his play 'the Swap' was performed at the Boulevard Theatre in 1986 he switched to writing non-fiction books. He started with a travel book about South Africa in the last year of apartheid (Happy Sad Land, 1994), then wrote a second about a journey round Australia (No Worries, 1996) and a third about Ireland (the Craic, 1998). In 1999 he was offered the chance to document the BBC's first 'reality TV' experiment, resulting in the book Castaway 2000. the next year he followed Robbie Williams on a tour around Europe, described in the book Somebody Someday (2001). As a watercolour artist he has had ten one-man shows in various spaces and galleries. Examples of all his work may be read and seen on his website.
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below is a list of Mark McCrum's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Swap, TheSwap, The
Synopsis:
Thirty-something Edward is behaving badly, cheating on his long-term partner SUSIE with his old friend ROGER's younger girlfriend YASMIN. After a bizarre encounter with an itinerant Chinese magician, who sells her a potion that he claims will solve all her problems, SUSIE finds herself - in a Dramatic coup de theatre - swapping bodies with Edward. After 'the swap' has taken place (the couple now dressed in replicas of each others' clothes, Edward as a woman, SUSIE as a man), it takes the couple a while to realize what has happened. Soon they understand. Everybody apart from themselves sees them as each other. So when ROGER and YASMIN arrive in a wine bar to celebrate SUSIE's 37th birthday, they mistake their old friends for each other, with disastrous results. Susan's rapid realization that Edward has been cheating on her is followed by Edward's own shocking surprise: as ROGER chases 'susie' around the wine bar, Edward realizes that his old friend and his partner have also been misbehaving. the complications multiply in a farcical comedy of misunderstanding with a happy ending.
Notes:
the Swap was Also produced in A student production At Oxford University in 1988. A copy of A revised version of play may be obtained by contacting Mark on his website Above. the play remains unpublished, And there Are no fees for performance.
1st Produced:
Boulevard, London 1986
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Music:
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Booksellers:
Genre:
Comedy
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 2 Other: One Waiter//Magician m or f
Further Reference:
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