LONDON — The bedraggled man on the park bench reaches into his pocket and pulls out a white piece of cloth.
He blows his nose into it, contemplates it and then puts it on his head. It is a yarmulke.
Welcome to “Howard Katz,” the latest play by one of London’s hottest playwrights, Patrick Marber.
It is the tale of a middle-aged show-business agent facing a midlife crisis that threatens to become an end-of-life crisis.
And, as the opening moment of the play makes clear, Howard is a Jew with a very complicated relationship to his religion and to God.
“Throughout the play, he’s looking to find out who he truly is, so he uses his Judaism at certain points to ground him and to root him,” Marber says.
The play charts Howard’s disintegration over the course of about a year and a half, as he goes from being a successful London show-business agent and family man to a tramp on a park bench.
Howard struggles with a God in whom he may or may not believe throughout the play, until, at the end, “he’s at peace in his relationship with God — not certain that he believes, but respectful if he does,” Marber said.
Discussions to bring “Howard Katz” to the United States are in the very early stages.
“It’s quite hard to put it on Broadway without having had great reviews here,” Marber acknowledged, “but I think Broadway’s the place for it.”
A Hebrew production, however, looks likely as early as next spring.
The Cameri theater in Tel Aviv is interested in doing “Howard Katz,” Marber said. It would be the second of his plays to make the leap to Israel. “Closer,” which grabbed fistfuls of awards in London and New York, was a big hit at Habimah, Israel’s national theater, he said.
Marber has never been to Israel, despite plans to see “Closer.”
“Every time I nearly went, there was some bomb or some explosion, and I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to go.’ I was put off by the violence,” he said. “I pray it doesn’t keep me away from ‘Howard Katz.'”