Albert Marre

Albert Marre, born Albert Elliot Moshinsky on September 20, 1924, in New York City, was an American stage director and producer whose career spanned several decades of Broadway and international theater. He died on September 4, 2012, at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, at the age of 87, following a long illness.

Marre received a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College before enlisting in the United States Navy Reserve, where he held the initial rank of Seaman Apprentice. He attended the Naval Oriental Language School in Boulder, Colorado, and subsequently deployed to Berlin. Following his military service, he enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he joined a drama group and met his first wife, actress Jan Farrand. In 1948, while still connected to the Cambridge academic community, Marre was among the co-founders of the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the country's first classical repertory companies, which operated for five years producing classics and new plays, a number of which moved on to New York productions.

Marre made his Broadway debut in 1950 as an actor and associate director of a revival of John Vanbrugh's Restoration comedy The Relapse. In 1953, Lincoln Kirstein hired him to serve as the first Artistic Director of the New York City Drama Company at City Center, where he directed the inaugural theatrical season, comprising Love's Labour Lost in February, The Merchant of Venice in March, and Misalliance in April of that year. The following year, he directed Kismet on Broadway, a production whose cast included Alfred Drake, Doretta Morrow, Richard Kiley, and Joan Diener. For that production, Marre received the 1954 Donaldson Award for Best Director of a Musical. In 1956, the same year he married Diener, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Director for The Chalk Garden, and he also directed a Broadway revival of Shaw's Saint Joan starring Irish actress Siobhán McKenna.

In 1957, Marre directed the Jean Anouilh play Time Remembered on Broadway, translated by Patricia Moyes, with a cast that included Helen Hayes, Richard Burton, Susan Strasberg, and Sig Arno. The production earned five Tony nominations, including Best Play, and Hayes won the award for Best Actress. The following year, Marre directed At the Grand in Los Angeles, a musical adaptation of Vicki Baum's 1930 novel Grand Hotel, with Joan Diener in the role of an opera diva. Back in New York in 1961, he directed Jerry Herman's first Broadway musical, Milk and Honey, which received five Tony nominations including Best Musical. In 1963, he directed a Broadway revival of Shaw's Too True to Be Good, featuring Lillian Gish, Cyril Ritchard, Glynis Johns, and David Wayne.

Marre's most celebrated achievement came in 1965 with Man of La Mancha, the musical by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion, and Mitch Leigh, which again paired Richard Kiley and Joan Diener in leading roles. The production earned Marre the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 1966. He went on to direct multiple national and international productions of the show, as well as Broadway revivals in 1972, 1977, and 1992. He was initially signed to direct the film adaptation, but was ultimately replaced by Arthur Hiller; the resulting film, starring Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren, was both a critical and commercial failure. Two subsequent Broadway musicals created in collaboration with Mitch Leigh and Joan Diener, Cry for Us All in 1970 and Home Sweet Homer in 1976, did not achieve success.

Marre also directed two productions of Chu Chem, a musical by Leigh, Ted Allan, Jim Haines, and Jack Wohl. The original 1966 production, starring Menasha Skulnick and Molly Picon, closed out of town in Philadelphia. A second version opened Off-Broadway in 1988 at the Jewish Repertory Theatre and, following favorable notices from critics at The New York Times and The New York Post, transferred to Broadway in April 1989, where it closed after 45 performances. Beyond Broadway, Marre was active as a director in London and Los Angeles, working frequently with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company on star-driven revivals, including a production featuring Burt Lancaster in Knickerbocker Holiday. In 1967, he directed one of the inaugural productions at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Los Angeles Music Center, The Sorrows of Frederick by Romulus Linney, starring Fritz Weaver.

In his personal life, Marre's first marriage to actress Jan Farrand ended in divorce. He and Joan Diener married in 1956 and had two children, Jennifer and Adam; the marriage lasted until Diener's death in 2006. In 2009, Marre married actress and lyricist Mimi Turque, who had appeared as Antonia in the original production of Man of La Mancha, the same production in which Diener had starred as Aldonza/Dulcinea. Turque remained married to Marre until his death in 2012.