| Mark Umbers | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 June 1973 Harrogate, Yorkshire |
| Occupation | actor |
Mark Umbers (born 17 June 1973) is an English actor known for his work in theatre, films, and television.
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Born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, Umbers was brought up in Wetherby. In 1991 he enrolled at Oxford University to study Latin and Greek Literature and Philosophy.
Umbers' first professional theatre engagement was in 1997, as the lead role in the Broadway version of The Pirates of Penzance at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Theatre Royal Bath, and later remounted at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2000. Miles Kington wrote in The Independent: "I looked up Frederic in the programme to see who he was played by, and found it was an actor called Mark Umbers, of whom his programme biographical note said: 'The Pirates of Penzance is Mark's first professional theatre work'. Blimey. If that was his first job, apart from one or two bits on TV, he's going to go far..." [1]
In 1999, director Trevor Nunn cast Umbers in his multi-award-winning 1999 season at the Royal National Theatre, where he appeared in Candide, Troilus and Cressida, and The Merchant of Venice, which was later filmed for broadcast by the BBC. Various television roles followed, including a lead in the BBC period drama The Scarlet Pimpernel opposite Richard E. Grant.
Nunn subsequently cast Umbers as Freddy in the critically acclaimed 2001 revival of My Fair Lady, also at the Royal National Theatre, later transferring to Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The Evening Standard wrote that Umbers was "known throughout the western world as the most beautiful man ever seen".[2] Variety critic Matt Wolf noted that "Umbers...is that rare Freddy who actually seems like a worthy competitor to Higgins, and the actor brings down the house with On the Street Where You Live, his lush baritone the production's single most notable vocal feat. Returning to the song later in act two, he makes a hilariously lovesick lush...as his body is splayed drunkenly across Wimpole Street. One benefit of Umbers' allure: When Higgins snaps in disbelief, "Marry Freddy?," he is responding out of jealousy, not condescension." [3]
Following My Fair Lady, Umbers appeared opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor and Francesca Annis in Noel Coward's play The Vortex, director Michael Grandage's inaugural production at the Donmar Warehouse. The high-profile production led him to be cast opposite Scarlett Johansson in A Good Woman, about which Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter observed: "...the pleasant discovery of this work is the excellence of the male performers...the heretofore unknown Mark Umbers does a great job making the young Windermere a wealthy New York stockbroker, without a trace of accent. He also makes him seem straightforward and dumb and foolish, but then he gradually pulls back the curtain and shows us so much more."[4]
After playing opposite Anjelica Huston and Lauren Bacall in These Foolish Things and John Malkovich in Colour Me Kubrick, he played the lead role of Perkin Warbeck in Channel 4's historical drama Princes in the Tower and a further leading role in the Hallmark mini-series Blackbeard, opposite Jessica Chastain.
In 2007, theatre director Rupert Goold cast Umbers as the Gentleman Caller, in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie alongside Jessica Lange in the West End. He was longlisted for the Evening Standard Award Best Actor Award for his performance. The Financial Times described it as "an ideal performance"[5] with the Sunday Times adding that "it is Mark Umbers who sets the thing alight".[6] The Evening Standard critic Nicholas de Jongh noted that the climactic scene was "...played with an overpowering sense of intimacy and delicacy. In Umbers' brilliant, believable reading, the gentleman caller, engaged to a "homely" girl, genuinely falls for Laura, who has long nursed a secret passion for him. Having raised the girl's erotic hopes, he then comes to his senses and dashes them to pieces. Acted with indelible pathos by Umbers and Hale..."[7]
Later that year Steven Soderbergh cast Umbers as British journalist George Roth in Che: Part Two. The following year Umbers starred in Chichester Festival Theatre's 2008 revival of Funny Girl, playing Nick Arnstein opposite Samantha Spiro as Fanny Brice. Soon afterwards he played heart surgeon Dan Tate opposite Sarah Parish in the second series of the BBC1 drama Mistresses and The Master in the BBC1 film of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw opposite Michelle Dockery.
Umbers then starred in the Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of Sweet Charity, the first production of the show to have only one leading man,[8] with Umbers playing all the love-interest roles opposite TV actress Tamzin Outhwaite. The production transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The Spectator critic Lloyd Evans described Umbers as "a serious talent who deserves to go far",[9] with Kate Bassett in the Independent on Sunday adding "Mark Umbers is absolutely splendid, multi-tasking as Charity's string of sweethearts, morphing from the moustachioed smoothie Vittorio, into the hilariously neurotic Oscar."[10] Michael Coveney praised his performance as "Oscar, the bespectacled tax accountant, whom Mark Umbers plays, superbly, as Cary Grant with a stutter...It's unusual to have such a level of performance in a musical and it raises everyone else's game, not least Outhwaite's."[11]
After appearing in the new ITV drama Eternal Law, in 2011 Umbers returned to Chichester Festival Theatre in Terence Rattigan's play The Browning Version playing Frank Hunter opposite Anna Chancellor and Nicholas Farrell. The play was performed in a double bill with David Hare's new play South Downs.